Crush
by Fliegendamsel
Summary: I barely spoke to her the rest of the week, except as necessitated by our status as lab partners. Barely civil. Hyperaware of her presence several inches from me and of every movement she made. Obsessively thinking about her as I lay in bed each night.
1. Chapter 1

**Stephenie Meyer owns Twilight. I can't thank her enough for giving me a romance to obsess over that is not set during the Napoleonic era.**

**Chapter 1**_**, in which Edward Cullen insults Bella Swan**_

Forks High Dance Committee had done their best with the gym. Maroon and gold balloons everywhere (go Spartans!), glittery streamers, a concession stand with soft drinks and nachos…there was even a taco truck parked outside, though I would be very suspicious of any tacos this far out of Seattle. Or San Diego.

Emmett and I were lounging on the bleachers, taking it all in. It was Saturday night, Homecoming, and Emmett's team had gone down in flames. Unsurprisingly. Emmett had carried himself well, so he seemed resigned but not too down about it. We hashed out the game a bit, then Emmett asked me, all studiedly casual, "So, have you seen the new girl?"

"Of course I've seen her. I have two classes with her."

"Not bad, huh?"

Cue eye-roll.

"You too, Emmett? Is she all anyone can talk about in this piss-ant town?"

"Dude, fresh blood. You should ask her to dance."

"What?" _Not freaking likely._

"Come on, bro. We've been here for months. When are you gonna settle in? You don't even give these girls the time of day, and I bet you could have your pick. You're a good-looking guy. If I were you I'd totally tap that."

"God, Emmett, please shut up." I wondered what, precisely, that expression meant. Was it a reference to maple syrup production or simply a more polite cousin of "hit that"?

"Look, man, she's right over there." He pointed with his chin a few rows down the bleachers we were sprawled on. "She's cute."

I was perfectly aware of where she was in the room at any given moment, but I followed his gaze. "She's all right," I shrugged.

"Edward," he barked. "Bella Swan is a babe."

I snorted. Wanting him off my back and myself out of this conversation, I twisted her name into a joke. "Swan? More like ugly duckling. It's gonna take a lot more to get me on the dance floor."

"OK, OK, I'm outta here. Catch you later." He sauntered off, in search of Rosalie no doubt. As soon as he was gone my eyes wandered back to Bella…whose dark eyes were locked on my face. She was sitting alone in the bottom row, looking back at me over one shoulder. My breath caught. _How loudly had I spoken?_ I didn't see how she possibly could have heard me, she was too far away. I stared back at her, frozen, but instead of looking away like a normal person she held my gaze for a lingering moment.

Finally she dropped her eyes, stood up, and strolled over to a cluster of girls: Jessica Stanley, Angela Weber, and a couple others. I could see the others lean in towards her: she was speaking to them animatedly…but not angrily. It looked like she was telling them a joke. She must not have heard me. Then Jessica shrieked, clapped a hand over her mouth, and shot a look at me. I blanched. _Holy crap, she must have heard me. Crap, crap, crapety-crap. I hadn't meant anything by it… I had just been trying to shut Emmett up. _Mortified by my own bad manners, I hoisted myself up and went off in search of Jasper's blond head.

I didn't locate him, so I bought myself a bottle of Coke at the concession booth and leaned myself up against the wall at one end of the gym, rhythmically banging the back of my head against the wall. I wondered how long my siblings were going to force me to suffer through this debacle of a school dance...We should have taken two cars, but instead we had all crammed into the Volvo so now there was no way I could leave.

My eyes roved the floor in search of Jasper, but landed instead on Jessica Stanley, who was again shrieking, this time apparently in reaction to the opening beats of a Justin Timberlake song. She and Angela were dragging a protesting Bella Swan out onto the floor. Angela whispered something in Bella's ear that made her smile, and she followed them out to the middle of the floor to dance with a cluster of girls that included skanky Lauren Mallory.

I watched them dance and once again felt there were worlds separating Bella from the other girls. Jessica, all cleavage and sparkly hair clips, was frantically pronging up and down in time to the music and raking her eyes all over the room as if in search of someone, while Lauren wagged her ass in the most vulgar way possible and looked nowhere in particular, assuming all eyes in the room were on her. Poor gangly Angela did a female version of the awkward white boy shuffle, eyes on the floor or smiling shyly at her friends. My eyes were magnetically drawn back to Bella and as I swigged my Coke I tried to put my finger on what I liked about her dancing. She wasn't bouncing, she wasn't shuffling, she was swaying and rippling her hips—her entire body, really—with the music, but not really moving her feet. I had never seen anyone dance quite like that, and she looked great. It wasn't over-the-top like Lauren but it was, well, sensual. At least I thought so. She also looked like she was just enjoying herself, enjoying the music, enjoying her dumb new friends, totally content, somehow.

I mentally noted that this was the first time I'd seen her in a skirt—a dress, actually, some sort of dark blue knit minidress that might have come from a vintage shop. All week she'd been in jeans, thermals, sweaters, boots, coats, hats, mufflers. I guess that's Forks for you. Now, with her long sleeves and mock turtleneck, black stockings, and dark flat-heeled boots that came just up to her calves, she was showing less skin than most of the girls, but the overall effect was hot: all long legs and smooth curves. And that long brown hair, hanging halfway down her back, pulled away from her pale face with a demure little headband. God, she was pretty. It gave me an ache in my chest, and, to be honest, an ache lower down too. I was glad I was wearing jeans.

"Edward! Are you staring at Bella Swan again!"

I nearly jumped out of my skin. It was Alice.

I glared down at her. She was my twin, but we really looked nothing alike. While I was a little taller than average and lanky, she was petite, really tiny, but kind of busty. I had my mother's green eyes and reddish-brown hair while she favored our father, her eyes bright crystalline blue and piercing, and her black hair cut short in a spiky, mod bob. The only feature we seemed to share was our deathly pallor, which we were cultivating here in the cloudy Pacific Northwest even more than in Chicago.

"No, am not. What do you mean, _again_?" I hissed.

"I noticed you were doing it at lunch too. So what do you think? She's cute."

"Jesus, Alice. Can everyone just leave me alone? She's not my type."

Actually, I had just been thinking that maybe she was _exactly_ my type, except that I didn't have a type, since I never seemed to find anyone I really liked or wanted. I hadn't even kissed a girl for two years. Wait, make that three. But still, maybe Bella wasn't a type and maybe I just wanted Bella. But I certainly was not about to start blabbing all this to my sister.

She jutted out one hip and stuck her hand on it. "Really, Edward? And what exactly is your type?" Of course Alice was intimately familiar with my romantic track record, or lack thereof.

"Look, I was not _staring_ at her, I was just thinking…how she's fitting into that little group so well. So unlike us." I smirked at her. I couldn't care less, but Alice was such a social creature, I know it ate at her to be a bit of a freak here in the burgh of Forks.

"Oh yeah, I was thinking about that too, at lunch…it seems like they just adopted her on day one. Or maybe it was the boys…look, here they come."

She was right, Mike Newton and Tyler Crowley were sidling up to the group of girls, trying to wedge their way in. I felt a flash of anger at the idea of either one of them dancing with Bella, and a now-even-more-urgent desire to get out of this gym. But at the same time I was suddenly glued to the spot, desperate to see if anything actually happened between Bella and one of these guys. I groaned internally.

"Can we please get out of here before they crown the Forks High homecoming royalty?" I snapped. "I don't think I can take it."

"Fine with me. But I was just going to say, I think I'm going to befriend the Swan girl."

I looked at her but said nothing.

She nodded. "I like her. She's in my Trig class. I think I could be friends with her. She seems smart, and down-to-earth. She might not like being stuck with those guys all the time."

I kept my mouth shut.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2, **_**in which Edward Cullen lusts after Bella Swan**_

But maybe I should start at the beginning. Bella Swan had started school just one week earlier, about a month into the semester. Of course everyone in our tiny school in this podunk town knew a new girl was starting, that she was moving up here from San Francisco, and that her dad was the chief of police. A few kids vaguely knew her from childhood visits to her dad, but of course we Cullens did not since we ourselves were new. We had moved to Forks the previous January, also causing a stir of excitement partway into a school year.

We were a major disappointment, however. Not only were we a tight little self-contained family group—to be honest, pretty standoffish from the start—there was also the somewhat weird situation of my natural and adoptive siblings being paired off. OK, really weird. Whatever. We had all known one another our whole lives, and it was like those childhood crushes you have on your cousins, except that in this case some of us weren't actually related, and once we were all thrown together so intimately into family life the crushes just grew and flourished. Carlisle and Esmé were such great parents, laid-back yet firm, so good at creating a warm and loving family environment—and we were a big family for nowadays, at least in the cities where we were raised—that we all sort of turned inward rather than outward for friendship and even love, I guess. Except, of course, me. I was the odd man out. Anyway, our parents gave us all separate rooms, and occasional talks about being responsible, but basically ignored any middle-of-the-night hallway traffic. Or maybe they were just really heavy sleepers?

So the previous Monday I had been sitting in Chemistry class, alone at my lab table, when the new girl came in and was directed to my table by Mr. Banner. I had scored well enough on my placement exams coming into Forks High that I would have been in an A.P. class if this were a bigger city high school, and I guess with an odd number of kids in the class, Mr. Banner figured that I would be able to manage alone. He was right, of course. But now here was Bella walking down the center aisle, crashing into corner of the table—scraping it loudly over the linoleum and making me jump—and sitting down next to me, giving me a shy half-smile. My new lab partner? I felt slightly stunned. Earlier that day I'd seen the new girl from a distance in the quad, but seeing her close up I was forcefully struck by her prettiness. She had a heart-shaped face, pale translucent skin dotted with a smattering of freckles over her nose, big brown doe eyes, and pretty bow-shaped lips, the bottom one slightly too full to match the top. I stared at her lower lip, feeling a strange urge to bite it.

Finally I got hold of myself and dragged my eyes back to my notebook. She shrugged her coat off onto the back of the chair, knocking her own notebook onto the floor in the process, and we both bent down to retrieve it. Her long brown hair brushed against my forearm, and I caught a faint whiff of strawberries and a glimpse of the scalloped edge of a white cotton bra underneath her striped henley. _Fuck. _I felt myself getting a hard-on, right in the middle of class, which hadn't happened to me since seventh grade. _Fuck. _Khakis and boxers were not going to disguise this. I gripped the bottom edge of the table and pulled my chair closer in, angling myself away from her and praying to god she wouldn't notice. What _was _this? My face was hot and I knew her eyes were on me. Unable to stop myself, I glanced over at her. She was looking at me but dropped her eyes immediately, her cheeks suddenly stained crimson. I am sure I was shooting daggers at her: I was somehow angry at her for having this power over me, but more to the point angry at myself for losing control. The pretty blush spreading across the curve of her cheek was only arousing me further. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, trying to work through a quadratic equation in my head to calm myself.

After an interminable several minutes, my forehead was in my right hand, elbow on the table, and I was still gripping the table with my left, when Mr. Banner interrupted his lecture on acids and bases to call out from the front of the room,

"Mr. Cullen? Are you unwell?"

I straightened up and opened my eyes. "I'm fine." I replied, curt.

He gave me a sharp look.

I glanced over at the girl again and could tell by the way she cringed back slightly and narrowed her eyes that I was still glaring at her.

I managed to not look at her for the rest of class, which dragged on forever. Finally the bell rang…just to be safe I stayed slouched on my chair until the Swan girl and everyone else had left the room, then finally gathered my things and stalked out.

She turned up later that day in my English class. Luckily I sat in front of her, so I wasn't able to look at her. But I had trouble that period focusing on anything the teacher was saying. I could not believe the effect she was having on me.

I spent the rest of week barely speaking to her, except as necessitated by our status as chemistry lab partners. Barely civil. Kind of afraid of her. Hyperaware of her presence several inches from me and of every movement she made: shifting in her chair, doodling on the desk, twirling a lock of hair around her finger. Sharply focused on anything I heard her say in class or to other students. Obsessively thinking about her—her face, her words, her body—when I lay in bed each night.

And now it was the weekend, Saturday night, and I thought I had just successfully persuaded Alice to leave the dance when Emmett and Rosalie joined us. Rosalie announced that we were invited to Tyler's after-party. Alice, always eager for a get-together, jumped and clapped her hands together. Traitor. I tried to beg off:

"Oh come on, guys, you don't really want to go to his party, do you? That guy is a tool."

Rosalie was having none of it. "Edward, suck it up. You are always acting like such a martyr. Dude, do _not _try to spoil our fun. We are all going to go out to this goddamn party and have some fun."

I caved. Whatever agonies I was experiencing, having Rosie actively pissed at me was probably worse. A short while later we were all piled into the Volvo as I drove us over to Tyler's.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3, **_**in which Edward Cullen is shot down by Bella Swan**_

Word was Tyler's parents were out of town. We came up the front drive to find a spacious modern house, which had a wall of windows giving out onto a big yard with a creek running through it. It was a sweet house. There was a keg in the kitchen, a good sound system, and a few people rocking out in the living room. I immediately spotted Bella, sitting wedged into the corner of a big cushy sectional sofa with Angela sitting kitty-corner on the other sofa. I wondered how they had gotten here, worried that Tyler or Mike had driven them.

Feeding my suspicions, just then Mike Newton came into the room bringing Bella a red plastic cup. At first she waved it off, then at his jovial insistence took it. Tyler started fiddling with the iPod to set a new playlist and turned up the music even louder. A fair number of people were now dancing in the living room.

I went into the kitchen and grabbed a beer; Alice had told me she'd try to make this evening up to me by driving us all home. I soon found myself in my usual attitude: leaning against the wall. Emmett came up and leaned in, already smelling a little boozy, like he'd been doing shots.

"Stop glaring at the Swan girl." He snickered.

I flipped him the bird.

"Just get over yourself and ask her to dance, you pussy. You're going to scare her off with all this glowering and sulking, you emo fuck."

I glowered at him in response. I wasn't even going to dignify that.

One of Emmett's teammates walked by and kicked him on the ass to get his attention. He held his finger and thumb to his pursed lips and sucked in, making the universal gesture for "wanna smoke a joint," and looked upstairs. Emmett nodded, glancing back at me with raised eyebrows to see if I'd partake. I shook my head slightly. He shrugged and disappeared upstairs.

He was right, though. This girl was making me miserable, or rather my desire for her was. If I didn't try something, I was just going to have to sit by and watch Mike or Tyler or some other of these dumbshits make a move on her. I couldn't bear the thought. Almost more as a step of self-defense rather than self-indulgence, I moved around the perimeter of the room and dodged the flailing dancers to flop myself down on the couch next to Bella.

"Hiya," I began, brilliantly.

"Hi," she responded, her face blank. She didn't sound too friendly. But her cheeks had suddenly gone all pink, which I found intensely interesting.

"So, uh." Suddenly given heart by that blush of hers, I blurted it out: "Do you want to dance?"

Her eyebrows shot up. She looked at me as if I were mad. "Are you on a dare or something?" she asked, sounding incredulous.

"No. What? No." That wasn't the response I had expected. I had no idea what she was talking about.

"Oh, well, thanks but I'm not a very good dancer. I think I'll sit this one out."

"_This one"? What did that mean? This song? Is she going to dance later? Is she going to dance with someone else, just not with me?_

I sat there for a minute, unsure what to do next. _Man, it's hot in this room. _I wanted to get out of there, and I noticed through the windows people were hanging out in the backyard, around a pond and in the garden, which was prettily landscaped and lit up.

"Um, wanna take a walk outside?"

Her jaw dropped. She laughed and said, quietly, "Uh, no, I'm good here. But thanks." Then she frowned slightly.

"OK. Catch you later." I hoisted myself up and made a beeline for the French doors and outside into the cool but thankfully not rainy night air.

"_Catch you later"? Whuk?_ _That was . . . that was . . . there are no words to describe how lame that entire exchange was. She totally just shot me down._ _Fuck, fuck, fuckety-fuck._

I perched myself on a decorative boulder in the garden to agonize over it. I could see Bella through the windows, still sitting on the couch. Right after I left, Mike Newton was back, clearly trying to wheedle her into dancing, but to my relief, she stayed put. Ben Cheney came over and sat next to me, offering me a clove. I laughed and accepted it, having never tried one of these before but liking the smell. When I looked back inside, I saw Alice had sat down next to her. At one point Tyler came up to her and started to physically pull Bella off the couch, which nearly made me leap to my feet, but she kept smilingly shaking her head until he gave up. When he walked away, she glanced out the window, meeting my eyes for a moment, then leaned back and chatted with my sister. In no time the three of them—Bella, Alice, and Angela—were yukking it up. I was not entirely sure how I felt about this.

Ben, who ran track with me, sat down with me and we shot the breeze, talking about the coach and upcoming meets. After a little while we looked up to see Alice leading Bella and Angela over towards us. I kept my eyes on Bella's face, willing her to look at me, but she kept her eyes down. She wasn't being _dragged_ by Alice, exactly, but she didn't look comfortable. Alice plopped down next to me and started chatting up Ben, which must have been her ostensible reason for bringing the other girls out here—maybe some sort of a helpful favor to Angela, who seemed to have a little crush on Ben?—while Angela awkwardly went to stand on the other side of Ben. Bella passed by me to sit on another boulder and as she did stepped squarely on my foot, right on the bony top part.

"Ow," I complained, loudly and involuntarily.

"Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry," she gasped. "I am such a klutz." She put her hand on my forearm for a moment. My skin tingled where she touched me.

"What are you smoking?" she asked, curiously. "Is that a clove cigarette?"

I nodded and she laughed. "I don't know why that seems funny. It smells good."

"I think it's funny too."

Ben chimed in. "They're all the rage in Java. Seems like the rest of the world has more interesting choices of things to smoke."

"What, like coca?" asked Alice. I shot her a "what are you talking about try to act normal" look, and she shrugged.

Ben replied, "No, I mean…like have you guys ever smoked a hookah?"

"Yes," said Bella, and we all turned to look at her. She seemed taken aback. "I mean . . . just tobacco," she stammered. "There're cafés in San Francisco where you can do that. It's not as crazy as it sounds."

Ben said, "Right, so, it's good, isn't it?"

"Yes, the tobacco tastes like apple, it's really good. I'd probably never smoke a regular cigarette but it's different." She paused for a moment and then continued. "My grandfather smoked a pipe, and I loved the smell of that. People don't really smoke pipes anymore. But every time I smell one, it reminds me of him."

"Is he dead?" I asked. That sounded brusque. She nodded, seeming unfazed.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"It's OK. Thanks."

After a pause, I asked, "Want to try this?" offering her my clove cigarette.

After a beat she said, "OK" and took a hit. She handed it back to me and smiled.

"Does it remind you of gingerbread and pumpkin pie?" I asked.

"No, but it reminds me of home." she answered. Before I could ask her why, Jessica came hustling up to Bella and grabbed her arm.

"Ohmigod, I have to talk to you. You'll never believe what just happened." She dragged Bella off the rock and back towards the house. Bella looked at me and then the others apologetically and walked back inside with Jessica, listening to her chatter. I stubbed out the cigarette and put it in my jacket pocket. Looking up, I saw Alice smiling at me.

"What?" I asked.

"Nothing," she replied.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4, **_**in which Edward sees Jacob drop Bella off at school**_

The following week, on Thursday, I had just parked in the school lot and was walking towards class with my siblings, automatically scanning the lot for Bella's red truck. I didn't see it, but just as we were reaching the steps up to the school buildings, I caught sight of Bella hopping out of a black Volkswagen. I craned my neck to see who was driving it. It was some guy I didn't recognize. She closed the door and was walking away when the guy popped out of the car and called to her over the roof.

"Hey, I'll see you Saturday, right?"

It felt like a wrecking ball had just hit me in the chest. Who was this guy? He was good-looking, olive-skinned, tallish, muscular. Looked a little young. Was he her boyfriend? My siblings were walking ahead, oblivious to the little drama that was unfolding in the parking lot, or at least in my head. _OK, calm down. Maybe he's not her boyfriend… _I clutched at straws. _Maybe there's something wrong with her truck, and he's a neighbor who dropped her off?_ Next I was hoping he would turn out to be a relative, but he didn't look anything like her.

I couldn't stop dissecting it in my head during my first couple of morning classes. As soon as she sat down next to me in Chemistry, I launched in.

"Is something wrong with your truck?"

She stared at me. Color flooded her cheeks. I wasn't sure what that meant, but I liked it.

"Uh…yes."

I let out a whooshing breath of relief. "What's wrong with it?"

"Jesus, Edward, you haven't said two words to me all week. Why are you so worked up about my truck?"

I smirked. Hearing her say my name gave me a little thrill of pleasure. "I'm not worked up. I was just wondering how long that ol' hunk of junk was going to last." Her truck was a big, old red behemoth that looked like it dated from the 1940s.

"Don't disrespect the truck. That truck is old enough to be your grandpa." This reminded me of the party last Saturday night, out in the garden when she was finally talking to me. I had gone back onto unfriendly autopilot at school on Monday morning. I hadn't meant to, but that morning I had jacked off twice before school to filthy thoughts about Bella, once while still in bed and once in the shower, imagining her naked and getting thoroughly fucked by me in various delightful positions in both locations, and when I actually saw her I felt too wound up again to even try to speak with her. I didn't want to end up trying to quietly get myself off in the boys' bathroom again like last week after English class. So I ignored her.

"What's wrong with the old guy?" I asked, more gently now.

"Nothing too serious. He just needs new brake pads. I got my mechanic working on it." She chuckled as if this were some sort of inside joke.

"Your mechanic? Is that the guy who was dropping you off this morning?" Shit. Should not have said that. Clearly he was too young to be anyone's mechanic, plus now she knew that I had noticed that he had dropped her off.

"Why, yes, as a matter of fact. Not really…he's a friend. A family friend," she clarified. "He's almost like my cousin. I've known him my whole life."

This was not especially soothing to me, since I lived surrounded by loving couples who were like cousins to each other.

"Where's he go to school?" I definitely hadn't seen him around.

"He goes to the tribal school. He's Quileute."

Oh, of course. "I wonder if my dad knows him."

"What? Why would your dad know him?"

"Oh, he volunteers as a doctor on the reservation. It's part of a goodwill effort to get the tribe to embrace his work."

"What work?"

"He is gathering genetic samples as part of an archaeological dig in Strawberry Bay. He's trying to get proof of the exact timing of the migration here by the Northwestern tribes, and their exact place of origin."

"Oh, don't they already kind of know? The land bridge over the Bering Strait during the last ice age?"

"I guess that's up for debate. It might have been earlier. And there is this question of Clovis arrowheads…"

She nodded. "Oh yes. I saw a _National Geographic_ article about that."

"You read _National Geographic_?"

"Only for the articles."

I busted out laughing at this, only to draw the irate attention of Mr. Banner, who immediately asked me to list the noble gases for the class. Helpfully, he had them written on the board behind him so I was able to answer without missing a beat.

As soon as he was done with me, Bella whispered, "So all that is probably kind of controversial for the tribe."

I nodded. "They don't much care for anyone digging up their grandfathers or reworking their creation story."

"That's interesting, though, your father's work." She sounded approving. "It would be so cool to be on an archaeological dig." I made a mental note of that.

"So what's Saturday?" I asked, further exposing my eavesdropping. Who cares, I was already letting it all hang out.

"What?" she asked, confused.

"Saturday. I heard you say you were going somewhere on Saturday?"

"Oh, that." She glanced up at me appraisingly. "First Sonics game of the season. My dad is going to La Push to hang out with Jacob's dad and watch the game. I don't go along that often but I said I would for this."

"Jacob? Is that his name?"

"Yes."

"Well, he must be thrilled. I hope he knows what he's doing with your truck."

She gave me a funny look. We didn't speak any more for the rest of class.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5, **_**in which Bella visits the Cullens' house**_

Next afternoon, I guess I still had that Sonics game on my mind because I asked Jasper if he wanted to shoot around. We had a basketball hoop set up out front near the garage. Jasper is shorter than I am but has a good outside shot so we are pretty well matched. We played long enough to work up a sweat, even in the chilly overcast Forks afternoon, and shot the shit simultaneously. Jasper was looking at schools, and location was of course a bone of contention with Alice. He wanted to go to West Point and study military history. Alice wanted to study fashion design and end up in New York.

"I don't understand the problem. West Point is, like, fifty miles north of New York City."

"She doesn't want to _study _in New York, she just wants to end up there."

"So where does she want to study?"

"Paris."

"Of course. But what are _you _supposed to do _there_? Study the Franco-Prussian War? She should go to Pratt or Parsons."

"Yeah, that sounds perfectly reasonable to me…but you know Alice. She's hard to dissuade once she has an idea in her head. She sort of has a vision of how things are going to be."

"Yeah, that's Alice," I agreed.

"I'm just going to have to keep working on her…no use arguing and carrying on about it. You know how girls are."

"Yeah…except no." I laughed a little hollow laugh.

We shot around a little more, then he asked me, "Did Alice tell you she invited Bella Swan over today?"

"What, here?"

"Yeah."

"Oh." After a minute I said, "Well, she told me she was going to befriend her."

"Is that what's going on?"

"What else would it be?"

"Oh, I don't know. She seems to think you have a thing for Bella."

"No. I mean, I don't even know her."

"Do you think she's cute?"

_She makes me weak in the knees. _"She's all right."

"Why don't you hang out with her?"

"Why is everyone so obsessed with getting me together with Bella Swan?" I whinged.

"Don't get all bent out of shape about it. Anyway, I just thought it would be good for you…to have a little female companionship. Seems to me you deserve someone nice."

I sighed. "Thanks, Jasper. I don't know what my problem is." _Maybe I do kind of know. I'm not extraverted enough. I spend all my time hanging out with my relatives. My mom is dead so I probably have issues with women. Everything is conspiring to leave me . . . always alone. Oh, shut up, Edward. Emmett was right, I am an emo fuck._

Jasper decided he was done playing basketball but I stayed out front, shooting around, perhaps out of curiosity. Before long I heard Alice's scooter buzzing up the drive and there she was, pressed right up behind Alice and clinging to her waist. _Hm, _I_'d like to give her a ride on that thing_._ Or just a ride…OK, stop._ Alice drove up and parked by the steps and in between layups I watched Bella dismount, take off the extra helmet, and shake out her hair. I aimed a three-pointer at the hoop.

"Hey, Edward." How did I already know her voice so well? The shot bounced off the rim with a loud _clang_.

I cleared my throat and turned around. "Hey, Bella." I croaked.

She was looking straight at my chest, which was bare. Suddenly self-conscious, I mumbled, "Sorry," and picked up my t-shirt from where I had tossed it on the ground, sliding it quickly over my head.

"My brother. Paragon of modesty," trilled Alice.

I narrowed my eyes at her. "Um…are you guys here to do homework?" I asked.

"Something like that," Bella laughed. Alice took her arm and pulled her up the front walk. I watched them walk up the steps and through the front door, admiring the way Bella's jeans hugged her bottom and the little metal buttons on her back pockets bobbed as she walked.

I went back to shooting baskets, so distracted now that every shot either bounced off the rim or missed by a mile. My brain was buzzing with the knowledge that Bella Swan was in my house. I felt nervewracked. _Should I go inside? Get a grip, Edward, _I told myself. Alice probably had her holed up upstairs. I was hungry, and decided it would be safe enough to go into the kitchen and make myself a sandwich.

I went inside and made myself a BLT, frying up bacon in a cast-iron skillet before piling it high on toasted bread slathered with aioli and garnished with tomato and lettuce. In short order, Jasper wandered into the kitchen, lured by the aroma of bacon.

"That smells fantastic."

"Want one?"

"Yeah, is there any avocado?"

I found an avocado and sliced it up, piling it on his toast along with the tomato and lettuce, then adding some of my bacon to make him a sandwich. We were both sitting at the counter, tearing into the sandwiches, when I heard Alice bounding downstairs.

"Where are you guys—" she began, before catching a whiff of the bacon, I presumed, and bounding back upstairs. After a brief kerfuffle, I heard Bella's voice, whining slightly, "Aw, come on, Alice, don't make me go down there. Seriously."

"It's only my brothers," replied Alice, teasingly.

She half pulled, half pushed Bella into the kitchen. "What do you think?" she asked me and Jasper.

Bella was looking all done up, her hair curled into loose ringlets and her pretty face made up. She was wearing a skirt of Alice's, made of flouncy white eyelet cotton, and a cap-sleeved blood-red top.

Before I could even think it through, I complained, "I can't see her freckles."

Both girls gave me a peculiar look, and Alice's eyes darted to Jasper.

Oh, well. I brazened on. "She doesn't need all that junk on her face. She looks better without."

Bella broke into a grin. "Thank you," she whispered to me. Turning to Alice, she asked, goadingly, "See?"

Alice huffed and started to drag her back out of the room.

"I like the skirt, though." I called after them.

"Aha!" cried Alice.

_What a pervert I am._ _Only because skirts seem to figure in every depraved Bella fantasy I entertain . . . sort of useful when you're bending her over the teacher's desk in __chemistry__ lab and pulling down her little white cotton panties, or taking her pushed up against the stacks in the public library with her legs wrapped around your waist…_that was the latest one, brought on by Alice's telling me Bella was volunteering at the Forks library after school some days. I closed my eyes and went to work on the square root of pi.

An instant later Bella was back in the doorway. "What are you eating?" she asked.

We held up our sandwiches. "BLT," I said, mouth full. Simultaneously, Jasper intoned, "BLAT."

"Want one?" I asked. She nodded.

"OK, go wash that shit off your face and I'll make you one." She grinned again and vanished. I got up to pull more bacon out of the fridge. Now Jasper was eyeing me queerly.

"What?" I asked.

"Nothing."


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6, **_**in which Edward and Bella discuss love at first sight**_

Next day in English class, Mr. Mason divided us into small groups. He liked to make us sit in alphabetical order by last name, then mix up the alphabet in assigning small groups. Jessica Stanley was in my group. Plus some mid-alphabet girl. Now Bella Swan got added in. Mr. Mason handed out discussion topics that would evolve into presentations and finally the basis for our next essays. Our topic: Discuss love at first sight, infatuation, true love, and the masked ball in _Romeo & Juliet._

Bella jumped right in. "OK. Is what Romeo and Juliet experience true love, or infatuation?"

I jumped right in after her. "I'm not sure about Juliet, but what Romeo feels is infatuation." Despite my recent first-hand experience with the concept, I wasn't about to concede that love at first sight actually existed.

This offended Jessica. "No, no, Romeo and Juliet…that's, like, the definition of true love."

Bella ignored this. "Why?" she asked, looking at me.

"Well, because at the beginning of the play, he's mooning over Rosaline, and his friends are kidding him about being constantly in love with another new girl. He's fickle. Not to mention the fact that he's fourteen."

Jessica again. "But then he sees Juliet and forgets all about Rosaline."

I rolled my eyes. "Exactly. And next week he might have seen someone new and forgotten all about Juliet. Except, oops, he's dead."

"And also married," laughed Bella. "But how about that? Shakespeare puts his infatuation with Rosaline in there, and makes a big deal about how young they are, but then Romeo and Juliet go and get married."

"They get married in secret, when they hardly know each other. He just wants to get her into bed. It's not really a proper sort of marriage."

Jessica wailed, "Oh my god. You are so unromantic."

Bella frowned. "But they _do _consummate it. So it's not a typical schoolgirl infatuation from a distance. It goes way beyond that."

I smiled. _But that part is every schoolboy's fantasy._

She brought us round again. "What about the masked ball?"

"Right," I continued. "So the first time Romeo _sees_ Juliet, it's at a _masked _ball. He's not really _seeing _her. He's seeing a mask. Infatuation."

She frowned again. "Everything is inverted at the ball. They speak in lofty spiritual terms but the meaning is all about physical love. He's talking about religious pilgrims while he's kissing her."

Jessica started scrabbling at her book. "He kisses her? Where?"

I smirked. "I think she only _really _starts to like him when she finds out he's a Montague. What better way to piss off mom and dad? That's really what every thirteen-year-old girl wants most, right?"

Bella smiled, but continued. "And also they talk in sonnets."

I looked at her, wondering what she was getting at.

"I haven't read a ton of Shakespeare's plays, but I don't think that's normal. His characters usually don't talk like that. I think he's signaling something."

"So what do you think it means?" I leaned towards her, curious to hear.

"So, separate from this play, Shakespeare wrote 150 sonnets, right? And they are mostly about love. They are all about what love is, the wonderful parts, the painful parts."

I stared at her.

"Here," she said, handing me her book. She pointed at a section she had underlined. "Fourteen lines, ten syllables each, iambic pentameter."

_ROMEO [To JULIET.]  
>If I profane with my unworthiest hand<br>This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this:  
>My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand<br>To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss._

_JULIET  
>Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,<br>Which mannerly devotion shows in this;  
>For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,<br>And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss._

_ROMEO  
>Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?<em>

_JULIET  
>Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.<em>

_ROMEO  
>O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do;<br>They pray — grant thou, lest faith turn to despair._

_JULIET  
>Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake.<em>

_ROMEO  
>Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take. [kisses her]<em>

"I think Shakespeare is signaling that this is for real. They're embarking on the sort of relationship that combines it all, infatuation, lust, love, everything, into a sort of religious experience. It starts off intense, like infatuation, but it goes all the way. Everything in the play is kind of inverted, like at the ball. It's an unlikely set-up: these two very young people, the girl is totally sheltered and naïve, the boy is kind of fickle and hot-blooded. We're not supposed to think they are the right sort of candidates for true love. But then as the play goes on and you read Shakespeare's words, you believe it, because he is describing love that is true, and messy, and not running smoothly. His meaning is that true love doesn't happen the way you think it will. You, the audience, or you, the person in love."

I stared at the book. What she said seemed blindingly right. Everything I had just said suddenly felt smug and shallow. I felt crushed and elated at the same time.

"You're absolutely right," I said, slowly.

I suddenly noticed Jessica and the other girl in our group, staring at me. In the intensity of the discussion, I seemed to have forgotten that there were two other people in the group.

"Well, I'm glad we got _that _sorted out," sneered Jessica. The bell rang. "Oh, thank gawd!"

I spent the afternoon re-reading the first act of _Romeo & Juliet_ and puzzling over Bella. She was so different from other girls. God, she was so much smarter than the rest of them. She didn't downplay it and simper, like Jessica, for example, or basically all these Forks chicks. I didn't think Jessica was quite as dumb as she acted. Bella didn't seem to like to be the center of attention, but she also didn't seem to care excessively about what other people thought of her.

That night, at dinner, halfway through the meal Alice asked Esmé if she could have a friend sleep over that weekend.

"Of course, honey. Who?"

"Bella Swan."

I choked on the sip of water I was taking. All eyes turned to me.

"I'm all right," I muttered. Alice glanced at Jasper.

"What?" I asked, peevishly.

Alice patted me on the back. "Nothing," she whispered, in her most patronizing tone.


	7. Chapter 7

_**Chapter 7, in which Bella shows up at Edward's track meet**_

Saturday morning I was up early and down to the Forks High track for a meet. As I warmed up, I tried to keep my mind sharply focused on the race, instead of wandering off every two minutes to contemplate Bella's sleeping at my house that night.

My first event, the 110-meter hurdles, was coming up shortly when I glanced out over the spectators and caught a pair of brown eyes fixed on me. I looked away quickly as a wave of delight washed over me. Bella was here_. What was she doing here? Did she know I was here? Did she come to see me? _I looked back over at her, smiling, but my smile was frozen with horror when I realized that she was standing next to that same guy who had dropped her off at school that morning. The "mechanic." Jacob.

_Fuckety shit fuck._ I felt embarrassed about how excited I had been. _Edward, you dumbfuck, she's not here to admire you. Who was she here to see?_ I glanced around and noticed a couple of Quileute guys warming up. This was officially a dual meet with Port Townsend, but the runners from the Quileute Tribal School were invited as well, since their school was so tiny. So she was probably here to see one of them. _At least Jacob's not running, _I thought with some small taste of relief.

But why, why does that guy get to _be _with Bella? I knew she had been to his house. He's also been to hers, presumably. Friend of the family. I wondered if he had seen her room. I looked over at them again. He was pretty tall and well-built, bulkier than me, but he kind of did have a baby face. How old was he? I felt pissed off. I needed to focus, get all this out of my head. I was supposed to be racing in a few minutes. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply, willing myself to think about something else, anything but that. I changed into my spikes and started in on my practice passes. I knocked down a couple of hurdles on the first couple of passes, but by the time I got to the tenth practice pass I was focused.

We got into our crouching start positions and I was off with the gun. As I sprinted, my mind flashed back to Jacob and I felt a burst of rage. I knocked over one of my hurdles but felt so energized by the angry feeling that I seemed to make up the lost seconds and finished first with a good time. I gradually slowed to a halt and bent forward with my hands on my thighs to catch my breath.

"Edward!" She had left the spot where she had been standing and was calling to me from the sidelines nearby. I walked over to her. "Hey, Bella," I smiled. I wasn't angry at _her._ One look at her pretty face melted all my hostile feelings.

"I didn't know you ran track," she said.

"Oh, yeah. I took a break from it when we first moved here, but I started again this year. I did it in junior high and in my first couple years of high school."

"When did you move here?"

"January."

"Oh, I thought you had been here longer. Where did you last go to high school?"

"Bishop O'Dea. It's an all-boys school in Seattle."

"All-boys," she said, thoughtfully.

"Before that I was in Chicago."

"Right." She sounded like she already knew that.

"Hey, Bella, there you are." My nemesis strolled up. He was looking at me as he placed his hand possessively on the back of Bella's neck, kneading her nape slightly. "I wasn't sure where you had got to."

Bella shrugged her shoulders and he took his hand away. That was good. "Oh, Jacob, this is Edward. Edward, Jacob."

"Hey man," Jacob nodded at me, wearing a poker face and sounding vaguely bored.

"Hey," I responded, unsmiling.

He turned away. "So, Bella, we're gonna take Seth out for burgers. Ready?"

Her eyes flashed to me. She looked uncertain.

"I have to go. I have a couple more events," I told her, automatically trying to make her feel comfortable.

"Oh. OK. Good luck," she said.

"Thanks." They started to walk off. After a minute she came back.

"But I'll see you tonight, right? Did Alice tell you I'm sleeping over?"

"Yeah, I heard. OK."

"OK." She turned and hurried off. I headed back towards the warm-up area. I looked back at her and she turned her head to look back at me over her shoulder at the same time before she disappeared towards the parking lot.

I was kind of glad she was leaving. I was pretty sure my next race was going to be an unfocused mess.


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8, **_**in which Bella sleeps over at the Cullens'**_

Dinnertime came and went, and still no sign of Alice and Bella. I wasn't quite pacing at the front window, but almost. I didn't want to ask directly, but I was sure Jasper knew what their plans were. When Emmett mentioned that he and Rosalie were planning to go to the movies that night, I asked Jasper if that was his plan with Alice. He said no, she was out shopping with Bella and they would be back later after grabbing a bite in Port Angeles.

After supper, my brothers and I were hanging out in the downstairs rumpus room, as we liked to call it. That was where the TV was, and the pool table, plus a lot of other games. My siblings and I loved playing games, which sometimes got a little heated. Emmett, Jasper, and I had an ongoing game of Risk set up down there and we were getting in some play before Emmett and Rosalie headed out. My ears pricked up when I heard girls' voices upstairs. They were here. It sounded like they were up in the kitchen talking to my parents. Would they come down? After a few minutes I heard their feet on the stairs. Alice burst into the room with Bella trailing behind.

"Hi guys!" she sang, coming over to perch herself on the back of Jasper's chair. I looked up and met Bella's eye. I smiled at her but felt too shy to say anything. She smiled back.

"What's going on here?" Alice inspected the board.

"Jasper is on the march," I told her.

"That's my boy," she beamed.

"Wow," said Bella. "You guys have a pool table down here."

"Yeah, you play?" said Emmett.

"Oh, sure, but not every well…" she answered.

"You should have Ned teach you."

I rolled my eyes and shook my head slightly. This was a private joke in our family. We had first noticed Emmett's, er, preference for Rosalie in the form of his always trying to help her with her shots, a flimsy excuse to get close.

"Don't call me Ned." I glared at Emmett.

"Why? Are you really good or something?" she asked, looking at me.

"No, Emmett's just being his usual obnoxious self," I explained, obscurely. She looked confused.

Alice bounced up and led Bella over to the cabinet of games, where they quietly conferred for a minute.

"OK, guys, we need two of you to come play Hearts," she announced.

"Oh, no, let's not break up their game," Bella demurred.

"It's OK," said Alice. "Emmett is going to the movies tonight. So that leaves Jasper and Edward to us. Those Risk games of theirs just go on for days. It'll keep."

"We'll play you," I agreed, hoisting myself off the chair and coming over to the card table. Alice put on some music and dealt the cards.

We played a hand, which Jasper won, and another, which Jasper also won. On the third hard, Bella suddenly got chatty.

"So, Alice, did I ever tell you what Jessica told me the other night? The night of Tyler's party…" she launched into a juicy and complicated bit of gossip involving two sisters I didn't know, but who Alice sometimes hung out with. She had Alice and Jasper's complete attention. She was talking fast, barely pausing for breath, and I looked over at her curiously. Then, as she lost a round and swept the cards into her pile, I suddenly realized what she was doing. We were already more than halfway through the game and she had taken every trick.

"Hey," I began, pointing at her pile of cards, but she suddenly met my eyes with a fierce look.

"No table talk, Cullen," she said menacingly.

I burst out laughing.

"Oh shit," said Jasper, looking down at his cards. I looked at mine, and we both looked at Alice.

"What?" she asked, bewildered.

"Bella's shooting the moon," Jasper said. Bella kicked me under the table.

"Hey, kick him too," I complained.

"Oh, no," she answered. "You're the indiscreet one."

"I'm sorry," I whispered, tilting my head and batting my eyelashes at her.

She looked at me dazedly for a moment, but then smirked. " 'S all right," she laughed. "I think I can still do it." She continued leading and by the time we all had two cards left the rest of us threw them down. I grinned at her. Everything she did charmed me.

"That was awesome," I said.

She went pink. "Thanks. I guess next time I'll have to make sure you're the one I distract."

I opened my mouth and shut it again.

"So I'll add 26 points to all our scores," said scorekeeper Alice.

"Or you could just take 26 off mine," answered Bella. "New Moon Rules."


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9, **_**in which Bella and Edward have a midnight snack**_

In the middle of the night I sat up in bed, suddenly awake. I wondered whether I had been awoken by a noise, but decided I was just thirsty. I quietly opened my bedroom door and poked my head out into the hall. Alice's door was slightly ajar, but all was quiet. I padded down the hall and downstairs, thinking about a glass of chocolate milk. When I came to the kitchen a light gleamed through the doorway. I came upon Bella standing in a pool of light, peering into the fridge.

"Psst," I whispered. She whipped around, slamming the fridge closed, her eyes wide.

"Oh! Edward," she whispered. My name on her lips gave me a little shiver, as always. "Busted." She seemed embarrassed.

"Midnight snack?" I asked, trying to set her at ease. She nodded. I could not quite make out what she was wearing, something dark, but her shoulders and arms were bare and glimmering even in the now-darkened room. Also her feet.

"Do you want a hot fudge sundae?" I asked.

She giggled. "Yes."

I felt giddy. I wanted to touch her. "Sit here," I told her, patting one of the stools, and placing my hand on the small of her back as she climbed up, caressing her slightly before pulling away my hand as if I were touching something hot. Then I busied myself with heating hot fudge in the microwave while I scooped ice cream into bowls and crumbled Oreos over the tops. I kept the lights turned off to hide the fact that I was fully excited. Luckily I was wearing boxer briefs and sweatpants rather than pitching a tent in my usual loose cotton pajama bottoms only. I had never needed to worry so much about imminent wardrobe malfunctions before I met Bella Swan.

I slid a sundae over to her and sat down next to her with mine, resting one foot on her stool so that my shin barely touched her calf. My entire body felt tensely riveted by that faint contact.

"You're a good eater," I commented. I hoped she wouldn't take that amiss. Some girls would.

She didn't. "You're a good cook." She pressed her leg against mine for a moment, then shifted it away altogether. I wondered what that meant.

"I learned from my mother."

She paused. "What was she like?"

I noticed that she was fully aware of the fact that Esmé was not my mother. I wondered if she had discussed it with Alice, or someone else.

"I was really close to her. She was…very sweet to me. We were kind of alike. We even look alike. More than my siblings."

"Alice and Emmett?" she confirmed.

"Yes. They look more like my dad. She was very musical…she played piano, and she made me learn violin starting when I was really little."

"I'd like to hear that."

I laughed. "Not likely. I've moved on." To the guitar, but for some reason I didn't really want to say that. I wanted to show her, to play for her.

"Hmm," she commented. Then she sighed. "How long…how old were you…" She wasn't sure how to ask.

"I was ten when she died."

"I'm sorry."

" 'S all right, I'm used to her being gone." Well, sort of. "Esmé is great. She was my mom's best friend. They're kind of alike, very sweet and loving."

"And what about Carlisle?"

"I really admire Carlisle. He's impressive, he's an inspiring person. It's interesting, he is someone who is trying to understand history, but through science. He's a real intellectual."

"Alice said you were thinking about following in his footsteps and going to med school." So they _were_ talking about me. I liked that.

"Yeah, I can't think what would be better. His work is, well, fascinating. I probably won't do exactly what he did, though. He's an MD/PhD. That's… a commitment."

"Hm. Where do you want to go to school?"

"I guess I always figured on going back East. Brown, maybe, or Columbia." There was a pause. "What about you?"

She sighed. "I don't know. I'll probably end up as an English major, by default."

"You could do science if you wanted. You're good at chemistry," I pointed out.

She glanced at me. "Thanks."

"Where do you think you'll end up going?"

"Uh, well, either U-Dub, if I'm still here, or maybe Berkeley."

_If she's still here? _"What do you mean?" I stammered.

"Well, you know, my dad's a cop and my mom's an artist…I think out-of-state tuition is probably out of the question."

"I see…" That wasn't what I had meant. My brain was churning with the idea that she might be leaving Washington.

"But I mean, those are both good schools, so it's all good. If I get in, of course."

"U-Dub has a great medical school," I commented. I wasn't sure whom I was informing of this.

"But," I continued. "You don't want to have to start again at a new high school _now_."

"No…or go back to my old one, you mean?"

"Right." I felt upset. "What was your old one like?"

"It was actually a pretty good one. It was…challenging."

"It was a public school? In San Francisco?"

"Yeah, but a really good one. That you had to test into."

"So do you want to go back?"

She paused. "Not really. I'm just not sure what's happening next with my mom. She is touring Asia with her boyfriend."

"Touring Asia?"

"He's a sound guy for Cirque de Soleil. She had the chance to go on tour with him, to Asia and Australia. That's why I decided to come live with my dad for a while, so she'd have the chance to do it."

"You sound like the parent, sacrificing to give your child every opportunity."

She laughed. "That is a bit what it's like. But I don't begrudge her. My mom is great. She's, you know, a bit of a free spirit."

"What kind of art does she do?"

"Her favorite medium is metal sculpture by blowtorch."

"Seriously?"

"Yup."

"And now she's run away with the circus."

"Right."

I smiled. We sat in companionable silence for a couple of minutes, scraping the last of the fudge out of our bowls. I glanced at the clock: 3 a.m.

"I guess we should get back upstairs." I had no idea why I said it. I had zero desire to leave her. The more I talked to her the more smitten I was. But maybe she was tired.

"I guess so," she agreed. She picked up the bowls, put them in the sink, and ran water over them. I followed her upstairs, fighting off another urge to touch her. We reached Alice's door. Silence within. She turned around.

"Thanks for the midnight sundae," she whispered. She went up on tippy toes and quickly put her hands on my shoulders and kissed my cheek before vanishing into Alice's room. I floated down the hall and tossed in my bed for the next hour and a half.


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10, **_**in which Edward makes waffles and ogles Bella**_

Esmé called up to Alice and Bella from the kitchen doorway. "Girls, come down here and you can have some of Edward's waffles."

"Edward is making waffles?" Bella sounded either approving or amused, I was not sure which. She poked her head into the doorway to verify this fact. I met her eyes and we grinned at each other briefly. She watched me pour batter into the waffle iron, and then when Alice came into the kitchen she followed her in.

"He makes waffles every Sunday. It's a family ritual." The girls helped themselves to coffee. Alice came to sit at the counter and continue work on the crossword I had abandoned and Bella leaned over to help her, her back towards me. Her hair was tied up in a ponytail. I could see now, she was wearing stretchy formfitting black yoga pants and a black spaghetti-strap camisole. As I stood over the waffle iron waiting for the batter to puff up and the beeper to sound, I was eying her surreptitiously: the freckles dotting her shoulders, her sharp little anklebones and pink-painted toenails, the way her hip jutted out from her waist…I was especially interested in that line of her hip, she was so slender and not fleshy and yet that curve of her hip and bottom managed to look voluptuous…I imagined myself standing behind her, hands circling her waist, sliding down her hip, cupping that round ass of hers, my lips brushing her neck, using my teeth to slide the strap off her shoulder, licking her, biting her, _tasting _her… _see how on top of it I am, I made sure to put jeans on before coming downstairs this morning…just in case..._I felt Alice's eyes on me and dropped mine back to the waffle iron. Emmett and Jasper appeared, and Bella offered to help Esmé finish setting the table and Esmé led her out the room.

Alice immediately attacked. "Edward, stop ogling our houseguest."

"I am not ogling her."

Emmett barked out a laugh.

"You are," accused Alice, smiling wickedly. "You look like you want to eat her for breakfast."

"Shut up, Alice." I glanced at Rosalie but she seemed awfully busy pouring fresh orange juice into tiny glasses.

"I'll just let Mom know, she doesn't have to wonder anymore whether you're gay." This in reference to a heart-to-heart talk with Esmé I had suffered through the previous summer, during which she lovingly informed me that no matter whom I chose to love, she and Carlisle would always accept me and love me for who I was, et cetera et cetera. The story got out among my siblings, who thought it was hilarious and teased me about it unmercifully.

"Alice," Jasper said reprovingly.

"You've got it bad, haven't you, brother."

"Shut up, Alice."

"Why don't you just come out with it? Tell her how you feel."

"Alice, shut up."

"Confess."

"Please shut up, I beg you."

"What are you two fighting about?" Esmé was in the doorway.

"Nothing," I said quickly. Alice remained silent, and then opened her mouth.

"Nothing," I said, more sharply, looking at Alice. She just smiled. Jasper chuckled.

"Waffles are on," I said, taking the platter from the oven and carrying it to the dining room table.


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter 11, _in which Carlisle and Esmé leave town and their kids throw a Halloween party that goes horribly awry for Edward_**

"What about you kids? Would you like to make a trip back, see some old friends?"

Carlisle had a genetics conference to attend in Chicago, and Esmé planned to accompany him.

In a moment of pure silent-film physical comedy, all five of us made rapid-fire eye contact with every single other sibling and remained perfectly silent.

I spoke up first. "Chemistry midterm," I lied, smoothly. Seemed feasible.

"Yeah, me too…a couple of tests, and a paper due," Alice pitched in.

"All right," agreed Carlisle. "You're clearly old enough to take care of yourselves for a long weekend. But listen to me. If you have any friends over, there will not be any drinking. And, if there is any drinking among your friends,"—Carlisle was nothing if not a realist—"you five will remain sober and will personally make sure everyone gets home safely, or stays here. Am I understood?" We all nodded. "Do I have your word?" We each gave our word.

This was music to my ears, actually. My brain was working two steps ahead, and I realized that with Bella's father as police chief, no way could he be called out to break up an out-of-control party at my house, and no way could she get caught by him drinking at a party at my house, period. Not if I wanted to…well, who knows what I wanted. All I knew was this could be the perfect set-up for another Bella-sleeps-over-at-the-Cullens' scenario.

The night of the party was the Saturday before Halloween, which fell on a Monday, so we threw a costume party. Alice invited Bella to sleep over again, just as I had expected, and Bella came over early to help us get ready, which in actual practice meant Alice's getting to dress her up. Alice had already attempted to go to work on me in the days leading up to the party, but I made it clear I would submit only to the minimum, costume-wise.

After Bella was closeted with Alice in her room for an inordinate amount of time, I heard footsteps on the stairs and peeked out of the kitchen to see Bella coming down. She was wearing a black velvet knee-length dress with a square collar, black stockings, and some scarily pointy black patent-leather kitten-heeled pumps. Her hair was curled and sort of pulled back and pinned up on top of her head, with curls falling down her back. She wobbled downstairs and didn't look quite right.

"Bella, are you all right? You look kind of pale."

She grinned. Plastic vampire fangs against blood-red lips.

I laughed, pulling the pair Alice had given me out of my pocket and popping them in. "Vlah vlah."

She came into the kitchen and surveyed my snack prep. "Need some help?" she asked.

"Sure. Uh, can you put these chips in a bowl?" I handed her a bag and gestured to the cupboard. A moment later Alice came into the room, dressed as a sexy nurse, complete with little nurse's hat, short skirt, impressive cleavage, and large black medical bag in hand.

"Nice shoes," I complimented her. She was wearing actual white nurse's shoes. "Authentic."

"I strive for authenticity."

"What's in the bag? Is it time for my meds?"

She pulled it open. It was full of makeup.

"I've come to put on your finishing touches. Can I please put this in your hair?" She held up a jar of blue-green Dippity Doo and a black comb.

"Pass," I intoned. My hair was always going in every direction at once, thanks in part to my habit of running my hands through it and ruffling it when I was nervous or bored, but despite my control-freakish tendencies I didn't fancy that slicked-back Bela Lugosi look. I had also refused to let her dress me, opting instead for a plain black t-shirt and black jeans.

She sighed and tossed the goop back in the bag, pulling out a tube of white makeup and a palette of oil face paints.

"OK," she said resignedly. "Sit down and close your eyes."

I did as instructed and let her paint my face pale and give me dark circles under the eyes. Last step was painting my lips blood red, like Bella's. She told me to relax my mouth as she brushed on the color. I opened my eyes to see Bella watching me intently, lips parted. She looked away at once, turning pink, and got busy filling the bowl in her hand with chips.

Alice leaned back to regard her work, and seemed satisfied. "All right, you'll do." She turned to Bella. "How about you? Are you all good?" she asked. Bella glanced at me and gestured to Alice to follow her into the other room. I heard Alice giggling a moment later and I leaned back and craned my neck to peek through the door after them. "So, you just lick your fingers and then run them up the back of your leg," Alice was explaining, as she demonstrated on her own leg. Bella imitated her, then started plucking at her dress at mid-thigh level as if she were adjusting her stocking. I gawked, realizing that she must be wearing thigh-highs. Or, a garter belt. _Jesus Christ,_ I thought, rubbing my face. Alice looked over and caught my eye. "Don't smear your makeup, you naughty thing," she scolded me, waggling one finger. Then she winked at me. The doorbell rang, guests began pouring in, and the party was underway.

I didn't really talk to Bella for most of the night. It was like we were circling around each other, saving each other for last. I was talking to her friends, even Jessica and Lauren, whom I usually tried to ignore as much as possible, and she was talking to my siblings. It was obvious to me that something was up between us because the only ones we weren't talking to were each other. The anticipation was killing me. But I didn't really want to be with her amid all these people, I wanted her to myself when the party had died down.

It was getting close to midnight. I was sitting near the doorway between the kitchen and the living room, admiring her in that black velvet dress. It fit her like a glove and set off her pale skin. She was on the other side of the room talking with Angela and Ben, a bottle of beer in one hand. I wasn't sure who had brought it but I wasn't worrying about it because she was staying over anyway. My main concern was trying to figure out how to get her alone. I wanted to talk to her, and I really wanted to try to kiss her. Was it too cold to take her outside? Probably. I could invite her up to my room. Not sure she would go for that. I wasn't trying to seduce her, I just wanted to kiss her. Properly. Oh, and just slip my fingertips up her skirt to see if I was right about her stockings. That was all.

"Hey, Edward," came a breathy voice in my ear. "Stop staring at Bella Swan." I looked up. It was Lauren, of all people.

"Oh, hey, Lauren." I jerked my chin up by way of greeting.

"Edward," she drawled. "I have a secret to tell you."

She leant down, put her mouth close to my ear, and suddenly wrapped her arm around my neck and stuck her tongue in my ear. Bella looked over at that precise moment, then quickly looked away.

"Yow, Lauren! What are you doing?" I pushed her off me, too roughly. She crashed into the doorframe behind us and hit her head against it with a sharp rap.

"Oh shit, I am sorry. Are you OK?" I stood up, grasped her shoulder, and felt the back of her head, checking for blood. With my luck, Bella would be looking over at us again, I worried. I needed to get away from Lauren as fast as possible.

"Look, uh, stay here, I'll go get you some Advil." _Her head was going to be hurting tomorrow anyway. She was totally slurring her words._ _Someone was going to have to take her home. It was not going to be me._ I darted off towards the stairs, heading for my parents' bathroom, but she was right behind me. I spun around and gripped her by the arms.

"Lauren, you cannot come upstairs with me," I hissed. "Stay here."

"Why not?" she hissed back. She grabbed the front of my shirt and pulled me towards her to whisper in my ear. "Come on, Edward, I'm so much more fun than that little virgin. Let's just go upstairs. I'll make you feel good."

_Little virgin? I liked that. However, what did Lauren really know about Bella anyway? But I had been wondering about that. I sort of assumed that she was too pretty to make it to age seventeen without _some_body getting her into bed…but then she didn't _seem _very experienced… she blushed so easily…I liked that too…part of the reason I was so shy about Bella was I was a little worried she was more experienced than I was, but if not, well, that's completely different…_My fascinating reverie was interrupted by the sudden painful awareness that my weird little struggle with Lauren at the foot of the stairs was being witnessed by Bella, who set her beer down and walked away. I was not sure what it appeared was happening, but it certainly appeared that something was going on between me and Lauren, who was now tugging on the waistband of my jeans. I slapped her hand away.

"Fuck!" I swore at Lauren, uncharacteristically. "Will you get the fuck away from me? Just leave me alone!" I disentangled myself from her, which took some doing because she seemed to have eight hands and was listing slightly like a ship at sea. She was also hissing at me about "not being such a fruitcake."

I bolted into the living room but did not see Bella. I charged up to Angela. "Where'd Bella go?" I demanded.

Angela looked conscious. "I think she left, Edward."

"Left?" I strode out to the entryway and through the window in the front door saw Bella, with a mass of woolen coat, scarf, and hat piled in her arms, marching towards her decrepit truck. I chased after her.

"Bella! Where are you going? I thought you were staying over!"

She spat out a laugh. "Right, Edward, I don't feel well. I'm going home. Can you tell Alice, please?"

I ran my hands through my hair. "You can't drive. You've been drinking beer."

"Just a half a beer. It'll be fine."

"Oh no it won't, Miss Police Chief's Daughter. I'll drive you home," I informed her. I grabbed the keys from her hand and opened the door for her. To my relief, she did not put up an argument. I got in the driver's side, then hopped back out and ran over to Alice's scooter, which was parked by the garage. I pocketed the key, which was sitting on top of the front tire, and rolled it over to the truck. I heaved it into the truck bed, got back in the truck cab, and started the engine with a deafening roar.

"Double-pump the clutch, " Bella instructed. _Wha? OK, there. God, I hope I can figure out how to drive this thing. How old is this truck?_

After a minute, she continued. "But isn't your girlfriend waiting back there for you?"

"She's not my girlfriend."

No response.

"She is nothing," I elaborated.

"You were all over her. You were all over her, and just last weekend…I thought… It seemed like…" She stopped talking. I glanced over and saw tears were welling up in her eyes. _Oh no, please don't cry._

"_She_ was all over _me_."

"Same difference."

"It's not the same at all."

"I can't figure you out. Are you a player? Or are you some stuck-up guy who thinks nobody is good enough for him, like all those girls say? What are you?"

"I'm neither of those things."

Silence.

"Bella, Lauren is jealous. Of you." I looked over at her again.

Bella looked incredulous.

"Look, she is jealous of you. All right?" _Say it. Out loud. Just say it. Can't say it._

"Please don't cry." I wanted to touch her cheek, but I was afraid the gesture would come off badly. Like I _was _all over everyone.

"Did you use to go out with her? Because I heard you did," she said peevishly.

"Who told you that?"

"So it's true?"

"No, it is not true. I never went out with Lauren. She wanted to go out with me, when I first came here."

She blew out her breath in a huff. We drove for a few more minutes in silence, and then were pulling up in front of her house. I got out and walked around to her side, stopping to unlock the tailgate, and then opened her door. She was wiping her eyes and gathering up her various woolen garments.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"I'm walking you to the door, goose."

I trudged with her up the path to her front door, in silence. I handed her keys to her. She slid the housekey into the lock.

"Bella…"

She turned to look up at me when the door suddenly opened. Chief Swan's bulky frame filled the doorway, and the quizzical look on his face was soon replaced with wary concern when he took in Bella's sullen, tearstained face. He glanced at me, looked back at her, and again at me, narrowing his eyes. _Crap._ I took an involuntary step back and straightened up. I was painfully aware that I was wearing _makeup._

"Bella, what's this? Is everything OK?" he asked, his voice scarily calm.

"Dad, this is Edward. Cullen. Alice's brother."

Chief Swan seemed to relax slightly, but not completely.

"Edward." He nodded.

"Hello, Chief Swan." I nodded back, speaking as politely as possible. "Bella wasn't feeling well, and Alice asked me to bring her home." I was praying he couldn't detect the smell of beer on her breath. She hadn't drunk much, according to her, but he seemed like the kind of man who didn't miss much.

"Are you ill?" he asked her.

"Yes," she said, smoothly playing along with my story, to my relief. "I think I am coming down with something. I'd like to lie down." Chief Swan removed one hand from the doorframe to allow her to pass, then reassumed his position blocking the entryway.

"Feel better, Bella," I called after her. Already on the stairs, she turned and looked back at me over her father's shoulder. "Good night," she said, softly.

"Well, thanks for bringing her home, Edward," said Chief Swan, dubiously.

"Yes, sir. Good night." I stammered.

"Good night." The door shut with a click.

I let out a long breath and banged my head against the doorframe. I walked back towards the bed of her truck, and half-drug, half-lifted Alice's scooter out of the truck bed and shut the tailgate. As I strapped on the helmet I looked up at her house, wondering which room was hers. I wanted her to come and look at me through the window. One light was on in a room upstairs, to the top left of the front door, but no Bella appeared. I kicked up the kickstand and motored back home.


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter 12, _in which Edward consults Jasper_**

I charged back into the house, royally pissed off now.

"Jasper!" I shouted. He looked up questioningly from the couch a couple of feet away from me, where he was cuddled up with Alice.

"What's up, bro?" he asked.

"Oh, there you are. I'm sorry, can you take Lauren home? She is drunk. Can you just get her out of here?"

"She's gone, dude. Tyler took her."

"Is he OK to drive?" I demanded.

"Yeah, yeah. He wasn't drinking, he has practice tomorrow. What's up?"

Alice jumped in. "Where's Bella? I thought she maybe was with you?"

"Bella went home."

"What? She was supposed to sleep over."

"I know, I took her home. She wanted to go. She was upset about…some stuff Lauren was doing."

"Jesus H. Christ, Edward, I can't believe you blew this. After all my efforts. This could not have been a more perfect set-up. Not to mention the underthings." She sighed.

I splayed out my hands and widened my eyes at her. I looked at Jasper again. "Can I talk to you, Jasper?"

"Sure." We went up to my room and I shut the door.

"What's going on?" he asked. Jasper was probably the calmest of all my siblings, and also the most close-mouthed. So I told him yes, I liked Bella. Then I told him what had happened with Lauren.

"Between this and how I was acting all dickish to her when she first started school, Bella now probably thinks I'm a complete asshole."

He rubbed his chin. "So she was upset about Lauren coming on to you."

"Right, or maybe thought I was coming on to her."

"But you told her it was the other way round."

"Yes."

"Well, her getting upset is a good sign, right?

"How is it good that she's all upset about it?"

"Because she's jealous."

I contemplated this.

"She must be into you, right? Or else why would she care?"

I contemplated this as well. I hadn't really thought of it that way. I was just upset that she was upset.

"But now she's mad at me," I moaned. "Maybe it's too late."

"Don't be so neurotic. I think it's totally fixable. She's probably more mad at Lauren."

"OK, so what do I do."

"So do you like her?"

"I've already said."

"No, I mean, do you _like her _like her."

"Yes."

"You have to let her know you like her. Clearly. Man up."

_Like Alice had said. Confess._

"OK."

"But then you have to let her drive."

"What?" My mind flashed to her red truck with its tricky double-pump clutch.

"Let her know you're into her, ask her out, but then take your cues from her. Don't be in a mad rush to bed her. You seem a little wound up. She seems like a girl who isn't super experienced with guys but knows her own mind. She won't like being pushed, but she'll let you know exactly what she's ready for."

"You've been studying her, then? This is your strategic advice?"

He smiled. "Yup. Trust me, you guys are going to be great together. I can feel it. But take your time."

"OK."

"I almost envy you, man. Enjoy it."


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter 13, _in which Bella calms down_**

That Sunday night I lay in bed scheming. I was trying to figure out _how _to ask Bella out—specifically, what to invite her to do. Forks didn't offer much in the way of entertainment or fine dining. Port Angeles was the closest town with a movie theater or even slightly romantic restaurant, but somehow taking her all the way over there seemed so formal and sort of stilted for a first date. A hike or picnic was out…it was November in Forks, after all. I was not about to take her bowling. Do people even _go_ on dates anymore? This seemed so twentieth-century. I guess people just hook up and hang out now…but with four prying pairs of eyes around my house, not even considering my parents, this seemed like the least appealing option.

Next morning I got to Chemistry class early. We had a lab, which made it easier to talk. We were popping corn and measuring its mass before and after in an effort to determine what made it pop.

Bella had come in a few minutes late. Her cheeks were pink from the cold, and her eyes bright. She looked excited and happy.

"Hi," she whispered, as she perched herself on her chair and dropped her bag on the floor.

"Hi," I grinned back. This was a much better start than I had expected.

"Guess who I was just talking to?" she asked.

"I give up," I said.

"Lauren," she answered.

I made a horrified face. She laughed.

"Haven't you heard? she asked.

"Heard what?"

"She and Tyler hooked up. I mean, more than hooked up. They are going out now."

"What?" I said. I thought back. "Did you know he gave her a ride home the other night?"

"Yes!" she leaned closer, conspiratorially. "That's when it all began."

"Really. All what?" I leaned in closer as well. Being this close, my head only inches away from hers, made me feel slightly discombobulated. I commanded myself not to start sniffing her hair.

"She was giving me the gory details," she smirked.

"Nevermind, I don't want to know."

"And, do you know what? I think she was trying to _apologize_ to me."

"To you? Shouldn't she be apologizing to me?"

She giggled. "Well, perhaps you're next."

"So if I see her coming at me, I shouldn't run for the hills?"

"That's up to you."

"I think I'll run. But, what did she say to you?"

"Well, it wasn't a normal apology like from a normal person. She kept saying that she was _sooooooo _drunk the other night, she just didn't even remember what she was _doooooo_ing."

I stifled a guffaw. I straightened up and caught Mike Newton giving me the hairy eyeball before glancing away when my eye met his. Apparently he didn't like my chatty closeness to Bella.

"But she seems pretty psyched about Tyler."

"Well, that's good. Hope it works out for her."

Mr. Banner was heading down the center aisle towards our table, so we stopped talking and concentrated for the rest of the period on our beakers and Bunsen burner.

After class I walked with her to her locker and lingered while she swapped her books in and out. I still had no formed plan.

"Hey Bella," I began, but she turned to me and spoke at the same time.

"Sorry, what?" she asked.

I chickened out. "No, you go ahead," I said.

Bella didn't answer; she was staring over my shoulder. I glanced in the direction she was looking to see Lauren swanning down the hallway on Tyler's arm. As they passed, Tyler punched my shoulder. "Great party, man," he called out.

I looked back at Bella, both eyebrows raised.

"Uh, I lost my train of thought," she said.

**A/N: Whoops...in case anyone is wondering what the heck is going on and whether Edward & Bella are in Chem or Bio together...I accidentally posted an older version of the chapters yesterday and earlier today. I am fixing that now...they have Chem class together. :-)**


	14. Chapter 14

**Chapter 14, _in which Bella sleeps over again_**

The next weekend Alice invited Bella to sleep over again. Despite how things had turned out the last time. Alice said Bella's dad worked a lot of nights and felt bad about leaving her alone so much, so was encouraging about her sleeping over. I thought back to the steely looks he had given me on his doorstep and wondered for a moment if he quite recalled that Alice was my _sister._ But then again, to him I was probably just some weird kid in makeup who had given her a ride home. He was apparently unaware of my rich imaginary sex life with his daughter. Perhaps I should show up on her doorstep in drag to throw him further off the scent.

So, not long after dinnertime on _this _Saturday, Jasper and I were lying on the big L-shaped sofa in the living room, reading for English in my case and history in Jasper's, when Alice and Bella came into the room. We put our books down. Alice flopped down at Jasper's feet. I was hoping Bella would come sit on my sofa but she perched on the arm of Jasper's next to Alice.

She pointed at my guitar, sitting in its stand.

"Whose is this?" she asked.

"Mine."

"I thought you said you had given up music?"

"No, I just gave up the violin."

"Hmmm." Then, "Play something for us." She picked up the guitar and handed it to me.

I dug in my pocket and found a pick. I had been obsessively working out early Beatles songs for the last couple of months, since I knew them all rather well to begin with and they were easy to pick up and fun to play. They were also all about longing puppy love and they fit my current mindset perfectly. So I tuned the guitar, then broke into a slightly fast version of "Please Please Me," with Jasper jumping in and helping on the chorus.

_Last night I said these words to my girl_  
><em>I know you never even try, girl…<em>

Both girls started mock-shrieking when we got to the high parts, and by the end they were giggling madly and Alice was fanning herself. When the song was over I started laughing too.

Bella looked delighted. "That was great!" she said.

"I guess that song still works," I said to Jasper.

"Yep. They love a man singing all high-pitched like a girl…I don't know why."

"Oh it's true, we do!" Bella was wiping her eyes. She sighed. "Actually I never really thought about it, but falsetto singing is weirdly hot."

My ears pricked up at that. "Why?" I asked.

"Well, it sounds sort of _longing_. Plus I think it emphasizes how low your voices are the rest of the time. Kind of…underscores the difference…between us," she stammered.

"_Vive la différence,_" agreed Jasper, looking at me with one eyebrow cocked.

Then Bella blurted out, "So, uh, what _exactly _is that song about?"

Jasper winked at her. "Oh, I think you can figure it out."

"What? What do you mean?" asked Alice.

Bella giggled and leaned down to whisper to Alice. Alice looked disbelieving. "Naw, there was no hope of getting blow jobs back then."

I could barely look at Bella but when I did I saw that she was as red as a tomato.

"What, you think they were invented in 1970?" Jasper asked, patronizingly.

"No, but that's not something nice girlfriends did back then, right? That can't be what the song's about," Alice declared.

I jumped in. "It almost certainly is…you can google it. Someone asked John Lennon about it once in an interview."

"And did he say that was right?"

"He didn't say no."

"Well, they can't have been all that innocent to drive the girls out of their minds they way they did," Bella chipped in. "They just kept it subtle."

"It's kind of hotter that way," she added.

"You a Beatles fan?" I asked her.

"Oh yes. I think I spent about a year in headphones listening to their albums when I was twelve. My mom had them all on vinyl."

"Were they big giant headphones?" I asked.

"Yep." I smiled at the visual.

"Who's your favorite Beatle?" I asked her.

She hummed. "Well, I can't say…I think it must be John plus Paul. It's really all about the chemistry between those two."

Not what I was expecting but on reflection I thought that was the best possible answer.

"Play something else," she smiled at me.

I thought for a minute and then said, "OK, here's a guy who listened to a _lot_ of Beatles records."

_I'm in love with the world through the eyes of a girl_  
><em>Who's still around the morning after…<em>

Halfway through the song Alice was up and waving Jasper out of the room. Bella slid into Alice's seat and listened to me play, leaning back on the couch and watching my hands. When the song was over she asked,

"What was that?"

"You don't know that song?"

"No—it was pretty, though. And a little sad. What was it?"

"Elliott Smith," I smiled. "'Say Yes.' That was one of his more cheerful songs."

She shook her head. "I've heard of him, but I don't have any of his records."

"I'll burn you a CD. He was a great songwriter."

"Was?"

"He killed himself."

"Oh, I do remember hearing about that. Didn't he _stab_ himself?"

"Yeah…he had problems. He was a genius, though. He said he became a musician because of the White Album. You can totally hear it in his music."

I went on. "So the album that song is from…do you ever listen to an album over and over until you suddenly realize it's a perfect album and not one note should have been different?"

She tilted her head and shrugged slightly. "Besides Sergeant Pepper's?"

"I guess I have a few CDs to burn for you."

"I'd like that."

We sat in silence for a few minutes as I picked at the guitar.

"So where's the ol' violin?" she asked me suddenly.

"Up there, on top of the cabinet," I gestured with my chin.

"Mind if I take a look?" she asked. I shook my head. She hopped up and fetched down the violin, took it out of its case, and, leaning against the arm of the sofa again, tucked it under her chin.

"What, you play?" I asked. She hadn't mentioned that.

"I don't play the violin," she drawled, "but I can fiddle." She drew the bow across the strings, then adjusted the tuners.

"Apparently," I said.

Bella tapped her foot and suddenly broke into a fast-paced Scottish tune.

I gaped at her, and Alice poked her head back into the room. "Oh my lord, Bella's playing a jig!"

"It's not a jig, it's a reel," corrected Bella. She kept time with her foot and bobbed her head as she played. I watched her long, pale fingers dancing in a complex pattern over the strings. This girl was constantly surprising me. She wasn't like anyone else I'd ever met.

Alice and Jasper came back in the room. When the song ended, she shook her left hand as if her fingers were burning. We clapped a frenzied round of applause and she put one hand behind her back and took a neat little bow, grinning.

"How did you learn to play that?" I asked.

"I know dozens of them. My mom is a professional fiddler."

Alice gaped at her. "You said she was in a band, but I pictured, like, a rock band."

"No, it's an eight-piece Scottish folk band."

"Oh my god."

"I used to play with them sometimes, when I was younger. Mostly in pubs."

"That was fantastic. You're making me look at the violin in a whole new light," I said.

"Fiddle," she replied.


	15. Chapter 15

**Chapter 15,** **_in which Edward and Bella have another midnight snack_**

Around midnight, as I lay in bed with my laptop burning CDs for Bella, I heard a door closing. Sitting upright and listening with dog ears, I distinctly heard footsteps thumping down the hallway.

I turned off my light and silently opened the door. No one in the hallway. I left my room, closing my door, and walked downstairs into the kitchen. Bella was sitting on one of the counter stools facing the door. When I came in, she laughed softly.

"You knew!" she whispered.

I skirted around her and sat next to her. "What's your pleasure, ma'am? Sweet or savory?" _Pleasure. I want to give you pleasure. I want to pleasure you._

She tapped her cheek. "What did you have in mind?" she breathed. _Are we talking about food? I'm not talking about food._ I involuntarily glanced down to see what she was wearing. There was no shoulder this time, but more leg. A little scoop-neck t-shirt and sleep shorts.

I dragged my eyes away from her knees, looked at the ceiling, and considered my options. "Would you like an omelet?" That would be quick to cook but also kind of impressive. I

"Really?" she asked, more loudly this time, then put a hand over her mouth.

"Goat cheese?"

"Mmm."

"_Fines herbes?"_ I tried on my best French accent. French had been the sole language option in the Catholic school. Just to add to my general aura of prissiness. Bella took Spanish, but she was from California so she probably had a leg up.

"Nice."

I raised one eyebrow at her. "You know what _fines herbes _are?"

She rolled her eyes. "I'm from San Francisco, dumbass. Foodie nation." She hit me on the arm with the back of her hand. OK, she was touching me. She could punch me in the face and I'd probably be overjoyed.

"Oh. Right." I replied, nodding slowly.

She continued, "It takes a lot more than _fines herbes _to impress Bella Swan."

"I'm noticing that." I got up and opened the fridge, taking out the ingredients and laying them on the counter. I contemplated turning on the light, but it would wreck the intimate mood. Instead I went out into the hallway and turned on a light that spilled a little into the kitchen, but not too much. I cracked and whisked half the eggs with salt and pepper and milk, then rummaged around in the cupboard and pulled out a small, rounded pan.

"Please take note, not nonstick."

She nodded gravely. "Now I am slightly impressed. But perhaps I should reserve judgment until you actually get it out of the pan."

I turned on the oven and popped in two plates. "Just warming the plates."

"OK, I am sorry I ever doubted you, Julian Child."

I smirked at her. I melted butter, poured the egg into the pan, and started lifting and stirring it with a rubber spatula. Once it was set, I crumbled goat cheese and herbs over, rolled the omelet, took a plate from the oven, and slid the omelet onto it. I handed it to her, passed her a fork, and started to work on omelet number two.

"OK, now I am totally impressed. This is delicious."

"Would you like a glass of wine?"

She paused. "All right."

I was actually slightly taken aback. I hadn't quite expected her to say yes. I poured us two glasses of Esmé's Riesling from the fridge, and came and sat down with her again. She held up her glass for me to clink, then took a sip of wine.

"What would your dad say if he saw you drinking that?" I asked, smiling.

"Oh, he wouldn't like that one bit."

"What would your mom say?"

"She'd ask if she could have a glass too," she laughed.

"How did your dad end up in Forks? Is your family from here?"

"No. He's from New Hampshire. He was in the Navy, and he was stationed in Seattle. After he left the service he stayed in Seattle, but he's more of a country boy at heart, and it's a good job…good fishing…so here he is."

"What's he like? Besides a little bit scary." I grinned, thinking back to the night I dropped her off.

"Well, he's not a big talker, or very demonstrative. But he looks out for me. He's a good person. He's kinda strict with me, actually."

I leaned in and whispered in her ear. "What would he say if he knew you were here alone with me, in the dark, in the middle of the night?"

I heard her breath catch. She didn't say anything right away. Then she licked her lips—I stifled a groan—and whispered back, "He wouldn't like this at all."

My face was only inches from hers. I could smell that strawberry smell that, among other things, undid me that first day. My heart pounded, and I wondered whether hers did too. She seemed to take everything so coolly...well, except for that Lauren fiasco. Ach. Jasper was right. I had to man up and let her know. Ask her out. I straightened back up and cleared my throat.

I chickened out. "How did he meet your mom?" I asked.

"They were students together at the University of Washington, actually."

"Was it love at first sight?" I smiled.

"I guess it was. But it didn't last," she said, soberly.

"What are you doing for Thanksgiving break?"

"Um, cooking a turkey for my Dad?" She said it as if it were a question.

"Really? Do you do the Thanksgiving cooking?"

"I do all the cooking."

"You must be pretty good at it, then."

"Well, I'm all right. But it's more out of necessity than natural talent. Otherwise, between my mom and my dad, I'd never eat a proper homecooked meal. But you, on the other hand, I think you have a natural talent."

My ears reddened with pleasure at the compliment. I was glad the room was dark.

"What's your favorite thing to cook?"

"Lasagne."

"OK, then, I hope you invite me over sometime for lasagne."

She raised her eyebrows and laughed drily.

"What?" I prodded, trying to understand her reaction.

"Nothing." She seemed almost embarrassed, but I couldn't fathom by what.

Silence.

Do it now, I told myself.

"Hey, Bella," I began, but she turned to me and spoke at the same time.

"Sorry, what?" she asked.

I chickened out again. "No, you go ahead," I said.

"So I heard a teaser on the news about a new discovery they made down at that archaeological dig in Strawberry Bay."

"That's right, they did find something new." Carlisle had just been talking about it at dinner a few nights ago.

Her eyebrows went up. "But I missed the story. What was it?" she asked. She sounded curious.

I lifted one corner of my mouth in a lopsided smile. "Want to see for yourself? Why don't I take you down there?"

She stared at me. "Really? Can we do that?" she asked.

I shrugged. "Sure. I mean, we'll sort of have to sneak in. But I know my way around."

"But what is it they found?" she seemed equal parts bewildered and enchanted. This was perfect, I congratulated myself.

"You'll have to wait and see. What about next Saturday afternoon?"

She nodded, dumbly.

"I'll pick you up at two?" That should give us a couple of hours before dusk.

"OK."

"Well," I stood up and put the dishes in the sink. "I guess…"

"…we should get back upstairs," she finished.

We climbed the stairs, and I felt a rush of frustration that I had ended my time with her so soon, again. Halfway up, she stumbled over a step and crashed into me. I put my hand on the small of her back to help her regain balance. The fabric of her shirt was soft and thin, and her back felt really warm. I pulled my hand away. As we reached Alice's door, I made up my mind.

"Bella," I whispered, catching her wrist and pulling her back towards me. I tilted my head down and pressed my lips against hers, gently. So soft and warm. She grabbed onto my pajama sleeves. She was definitely kissing me back. I put my hands on her waist and kissed her again, harder this time. She made an appreciative little humming sound and I noticed she was trembling. _That's good trembling, _I realized, with a rush of satisfaction_. OK, Edward, that's enough, don't get carried away. _I kissed her a third time, pushing her gently away and setting her back by Alice's door. "Sleep well," I told her, smugly. She opened the door and staggered slightly as she went into the room. I bounded down the hall and flung myself on my bed. No way was I going to be able to sleep now. I was exhilarated, and also worked up. I thought about getting myself off but felt a little skeevy about doing it when she was right down the hall. If only she would open the door and come into my room. Would I ever get her into my room? I had to get her into my room.


	16. Chapter 16

**Chapter 16, _in which Edward and Bella sneak into an archaeological dig site_**

From the outside, the Strawberry Bay dig looked like a construction site. A cyclone fence covered with green plasticky material blocked access from the beach but didn't allow any peeking. The site backed up into the evergreen woods that bordered the beach. Bella and I had parked the Volvo in the sandy lot adjacent to the beach, and were now standing in front of the locked gate as I tapped Carlisle's code into the electronic lock. The light flashed green as I pushed the gate and it opened with a click.

"Ladies first," I said, holding the gate open for her. She ducked under my arm and went in.

All the way over to pick up Bella at her house, I had been mentally kicking myself for ending up making our first date so undatelike. Did it even really qualify? Did _she _know it was a first date? Or was it just more of an opportunity to see something she found interesting on an intellectual level? The kissing in the hallway had taken on an unsubstantial dreamlike quality. Surely, however, _that_ made this expedition into a first date.

Then, when I had knocked on her front door and she'd opened it, I'd nearly laughed—leave it to me to plan an outing that required the object of my affection to wear a hat, parka, and jeans tucked into galoshes. I could barely make her out under all that. She was dressed exactly appropriately, of course. The day was overcast with a fine drizzle and we were planning to tramp through some muddy pits and a slippery cave—I even had an extra head lamp for her in my coat pocket.

"Hi," she had smiled.

"Hi yourself," I'd smiled back. I'd peered over her shoulder, nervously. "Your dad here?" _I should offer to say hello._

"God, no," she'd giggled. "He's fishing."

"Does he know we're going out this afternoon?"

She'd shaken her head.

"No?"

She'd shaken her head again, but she was smiling mischievously. I didn't press.

Now we were slipping in the gate of the site, as I checked back over my shoulder to make sure no one was around. Inside the gate were four large pits, dug down between fifteen and eighteen feet. We walked along the edge of the first and second ones, and I pointed out the partially excavated shell mound and told her about what they had found in the trash heap, as Carlisle had explained to me. When we came to the third pit, I climbed down the rickety wooden ladder first and spotted Bella as she climbed down. We walked around looking at the petrified remnants of wooden structures and fire pits. It was in the side of this central pit that the archaeologists had found the buried cave entrances, and with our head lamps we climbed up into the cave chamber where they had made the big recent discovery: petroglyphs, ancient word pictures carved into the rock.

"This is amazing," Bella breathed, tracing her fingers lightly over the carvings, of human faces, whales, other animals, boats. "How old are they? Do they know what they mean? Were they showing the animals they hunted, like the French cave paintings? Like, invoking their spirits?"

I shone my light over the wall, trying to recall everything Carlisle had told me the day I stopped by to pick him up from work. His car had been in the shop and I came to meet him, and he had shown me these caves. "There are some petroglyphs like that at other sites around here, supposedly made to create hunting magic, but the ethnographers think these are different, they think that they are part of a more elaborate rite of passage, like, the shamans leading the adolescents through a rite of passage into adulthood. They barely know what it all means, they are trying to piece it together. They think these ones are about seven thousand years old."

"I can't believe I am here, looking at this," she smiled up at me. "This is about the coolest thing I've ever seen."

We spent some time poking around the cave, looking at the eerie images, me racking my brain to tell her everything I could. I didn't tell her this cave was where they found some of the bones that Carlisle was using in his genetic research, thinking it might creep her out. Finally I remembered that there was actually another way out of the cave now if we could manage to find it. Carlisle had said the workers had removed a pile of stones blocking an entrance into the cave from the forest, which was part of the Quileute lands. I climbed around a bit till I spied a dim sliver of daylight shining in, and then made Bella climb ahead of me up a narrow twisty passage to the forest mouth of the cave.

As we sidled out of the rather narrow crevice in the gigantic boulders that rested over the cave, we found that dusk was rapidly falling—my watch said four o'clock. It was especially dim here on the forest side of the excavation site. There was still enough light to see, and if we skirted along the rocky crags we would find our way back to the car without trouble, so we pulled off the head lamps and I pocketed them. As we emerged from the rocks I was startled by a rough voice shouting at us out of the gloom—

"Hey, what the hell you doing there?"


	17. Chapter 17

**Chapter 17, _in which Edward feels protective of Bella_**

_"Hey, what the hell you doing there?"_

I felt a surge of adrenaline. Stepping in front of Bella and gently pushing her behind me, I could make out two figures stalking towards us. Guys. Big guys. Quileutes. They seemed put out.

"This is Quileute land. What are you doing here? Are you connected with this dig?"

It all snapped into place in my mind. I had read in the newspaper about younger members of the Northwest tribes confronting archaeologists, not at this dig site, but at others. Sometimes they were armed. Still debating how to respond, I didn't answer them, but I could feel my hands clenching into fists and a wave of something surprisingly near rage washing over me. As the youngest of five—including two rough-and-tumble brothers and one rather frightening older sister—I was not one to back down from a fight. I could see the two guys well now, and felt confident I could take either one of them, although two gave me pause; but I knew the last thing I wanted to do right now was to make a show of weakness. I took a step towards the guy advancing nearest me and growled,

"Back the fuck up."

I guess I sounded serious enough. He stopped short and glanced at his companion. Before anyone could speak, however, a _third_ guy appeared behind them. He was Emmett-level huge, a half a head taller than the other two. He radiated calm, menacing confidence. "What's this, my brothers?"

Before I could recalibrate my half-baked plan to go on the offensive, Bella stepped out from behind me and spoke up. "Sam?" she asked. "Sam Uley?"

He peered at her.

"It's me, Bella," she said, sounding surprisingly jovial.

"Bella? Jacob's Bella?" he asked, which made me feel slightly sick to my stomach.

Bella stepped out in front of me. "Oh my god, Sam, what on earth are you guys doing sneaking up on people out in the woods? You had me scared half to death."

Sam glanced at me and looked back at Bella hesitantly before breaking into a grin himself. Strong white teeth gleamed in the half-light. "I should be asking you, what are you doing out here in the woods like this?"

"We were just down on the beach collecting samples for our bio class…this is Freddie, my lab partner…" —here she waved vaguely at me—"…anyway we are supposed to be testing the water pollution levels of various bays and inlets, and we were collecting water samples when we saw this, like, fenced-off compound, and we were wondering what it is? Is this, like, a secret government site where the UFOs have landed, or what?" I could not help breaking into a huge grin. The girl was quick on her feet. She was also suddenly sounding slightly ditzy.

"No, this is some fucked-up archeological dig that should not be taking place on Quileute land."

"Oh, crap." She glanced at me. I wiped the smile off my face. "I wouldn't have guessed that."

"Bella, you guys shouldn't be out here."

"OK, clearly we've stepped in it. We should be getting back anyway. It's getting on towards dinnertime…Charlie will be wondering where I am to cook his fish." This made one of the other two guffaw. "We're down at the parking lot for the beach, if we head this way will we get back there?" She pointed in the direction of the car.

"Yeah, just follow the edge of the rocks out of the woods and back along the green fence."

"OK, thanks, Sam. Say hi to Jake for me." She flashed a big smile at him and started away, waving me to follow. I nodded at the three and followed. They watched us scramble along the base of the rock, and after a minute when I looked back they were loping back into the woods. Bella glanced back too, then broke into a run. "Come on!" she whispered, and we ran until we reached the edge of the beach. She stopped and leaned back against the craggy rock to catch her breath. Peering back into the woods, I could see no movement or sign of life. I leaned next to her against the rock.

"Oh my god, you are outrageous," I told her, not bothering to moderate my admiring tone. "You're an outrageous liar."

She beamed at me. "Thank god Sam showed up and I recognized him. I had to get you out of there, you looked like you were about to fight them."

"I think I was."

"That's crazy, you know."

"What else could I do? I was raised to defend helpless maidens. Plus, growing up with Emmett and Jasper, not to mention Rosalie, I know how to fight pretty dirty," I joked, but not really.

"Helpless maiden?" she snorted. "Right." I could tell she liked it, though.

"Obviously not helpless. Oh, and thank you for concealing my identity." It probably wouldn't have done for them to know I was Dr. Cullen's son and connected with the dig.

"It didn't seem like the place or time for introductions."

She looked at me like she was about to say something else, then she bit her lip. She looked down. "Edward?" she began, shyly.

"Mm?"

Still looking down, she said, "I'm not Jacob's Bella."

That was all the opening I needed. "I'm glad," I whispered, and kissed her mouth. Turning to face me, she wound both arms around my neck and her fingers into my hair. She had to stand up on tippy toe, so, with my back to the rock, I slid my feet down along the sand on either side of her to make our heights more even, and then wrapped my arms around her. We stood there for the longest time, just kissing and nuzzling each other. I felt overwhelmed by her closeness, her soft skin, her warm mouth, and especially the smell of her. I noticed the strawberries again, which were by now creating some sort of Pavlov's dog reaction in me, but beyond that there was just the rich, warm girl smell of her, which made me bury my nose in the collar of her jacket and breathe her in.

"You smell good," I mumbled into her neck. She sighed, then shivered. "You're cold," I realized. It was dark now, and we were at the beach. It was freezing.

"Here, hop on my back. I'll give you a piggyback ride back to the car."


	18. Chapter 18

**Chapter 18, _in which the Cullens invite Bella to go skiing in Whistler_**

Thanksgiving was usually one of my favorite holidays, but this year I was fully prepared to mope through it, expecting to be deprived of Bella's company from Wednesday, when we were to be let out of school midday, through Sunday. We Cullens were supposed to be spending the long weekend on Bainbridge Island and dropping in on some Seattle friends, and—worse yet—Jacob Black and his family were going over to Bella's; but Mother Nature came to my rescue by dumping a ton of snow in the mountains the weekend before Thanksgiving, which led to the gleeful planning of an impromptu early-season ski trip. Carlisle in particular was an avid skier and we had a time-share up in Whistler, about a six-hour drive from Forks—unless you drove like a Cullen. I hadn't leaked to my family the news of my outing with Bella, since it involved breaking and entering, but as Alice's new best friend (NBF), Bella was invited along. We aimed to leave on Thanksgiving afternoon since traffic would be lighter. Seeing as how the turkey would be devoured by midday and Bella didn't have a burning interest in the postprandial football viewing, Bella's father relented from his initial opposition to her going off with friends on a family holiday, and agreed that she could join us. The gods were smiling on me.

We took two cars, with Emmett, Jasper, and I driving the c30 and the others in Esmé's Cross-Country. Our car beat the other there, and the three of us bolted inside to get dibs on our preferred bedrooms. As usual, I would be sharing with Jasper, while Alice would share with Bella and Emmett and Rosalie would each have their own room.

When the second car arrived, Esmé came inside and called us boys out to unload the luggage and groceries from both cars. There was no sign of the girls, but maybe they had slipped inside the house before Esmé called us out. We made several trips, and as we took the last of the bags and headed for the house, Emmett was suddenly hit in the back of the head with a snowball. He roared and whipped around to glare at Jasper and me, but we both put our hands up and shrugged. I was next, getting smacked with frozen snow on the back of my neck. Before I could turn around, Emmett was barking with laughter.

"It's your little girlfriend, Eddie. Let's get 'er!" Before I could say "don't call me Eddie," he started running past me, only to be stopped in his tracks by a barrage of snowballs. All three girls were standing behind a snowdrift just a few feet away and flinging freezing missiles at us. Emmett was blanketed in white, and further back Jasper got hit in the chest and I got nailed full in the face before Jasper yelled, "Retreat!" and scurried back behind Esmé's car. We joined him there and Emmett panted,

"What kind of arsenal have they got?"

Jasper answered, "Well, how long have we been unloading the cars?"

"Maybe fifteen minutes." Fifteen minutes' worth of snowballs?

"OK, we are losing time. Men, start packing." It had been snowing all week, and the whole woodsy area around the house was fluffy with fresh powder that had been sitting in sunshine all day, melting slightly and becoming perfect for snowballs. We started grabbing handfuls of snow, shaping and stacking. Jasper poked his head out from behind the car and was hit in the face.

"Jesus Christ, Edward, does she play softball or something?"

"That was Bella? Not that I'm aware of." _She didn't seem particularly sporty. But what do I know? Maybe in addition to being a semi-professional fiddler, she's also a softball prodigy. It would be like her not to mention it._

"OK, listen. You need to get out and around and attack from behind. Neutralize Bella. Are you up to it or do you want me to do it?"

"I'll do it," I responded.

I sidled down to the other side of the Cross-Country. "Distract them," I requested. As Jasper and Emmett leapt out and heaved our few snowballs over the snowdrift, I darted out from the other side of the car and hid behind a tree. With a combination of darting behind trees and running in a half-crouch, I made a wide semi-circle into the woods beyond the house to come around behind the girls' foxhole, a little ways off to one side. I could see all three of them, squatting down and madly shaping snowballs, which they were adding to an already-substantial pile. Occasional missiles from Emmett or Jasper sailed over the tops of their heads to land harmlessly behind them.

I cautiously continued skirting around until I was behind a tree behind them, then I poked my head out until I caught Jasper's eye. He and Emmett disappeared behind the car, then burst out and started hooting and running back and forth like ducks in a penny arcade shooting gallery, trying to draw fire and create a distraction. When all three girls stood up again and began firing in earnest, I darted out and ran full speed directly at Bella, grabbing her tightly around the waist with both arms and lifting her up to spin her around. She shrieked with surprised laughter and began screaming for help from Rosalie and Alice, but they were both laughing so hard at the surprise that before they could attack me, Emmett and Jasper had breached the snowdrift and grabbed both of them.

I half-carried, half-dragged Bella into the woods towards another snowdrift and twisted around to fling her into it, face up. She lay there, sunken into the drift, laughing helplessly as tears streamed down her cheeks. I threw myself down next to her and began laughing myself, as she gasped for breath. She was wearing a stripy knit cap with dorky ear flaps and a pom-pom on top, and her cheeks and chin were bright pink with cold. She looked lovely, and I felt overwhelmed with affection for her. As soon as I caught my breath and looked around—I could hear my sisters still shrieking as some form of battle continued, but I could not see any of them—I grasped Bella's shoulder to turn her towards me, and began frantically kissing her cheeks, her chin, and finally her mouth. I look her full lower lip between my teeth and nipped her. She was still gasping for breath, and now she moaned, pushing me back and down, coming up to hover halfway over me.

"Your face is cold," she said, taking off a nylon mitten to touch my cheek. Her hand felt very warm.

"I wonder why," I answered.

"I'll warm you up," she murmured, and began kissing my cheeks and rubbing her own chilly cheeks against mine, then her warm fingers. I let my beanie-clad head drop back in the snow and closed my eyes, relishing the feeling of her touching me. My thoughts flashed back to Lauren, drawling about how she would make me feel good, but I knew no girl could make me feel as good as Bella could, with just a touch of her fingertips or a press of her cheek against mine. Truly, I felt like I had died and gone to heaven. She moved lower down, nuzzling my neck and nipping at it in a way that made me groan, and when she licked my earlobe before taking it between her teeth I felt dangerously close to coming in my pants. Suddenly, I heard the sound of someone clearing his throat and when my eyes flashed open, there was Emmett standing over us, arms crossed and smirking. Bella released my earlobe.

"C'mon, lovebirds. Bella, if you can stop sexually assaulting my brother for a few minutes, the ladies request your assistance in preparing hot chocolate for the victors."

He extended a hand to help her up, but at the last moment dropped her back in the snowdrift, starting off another round of giggling. She kicked at him with her snowboot but he jumped to the side, displaying that agility of his, so uncharacteristic of a big guy. He reached out a hand to me, and once I was upright I helped Bella up. We followed him back towards the house. I brushed snow from the backside of Bella's coat as we walked, then leaned in and whispered, "I like kissing you in the woods." She blushed up to her hairline. I liked that, too.

We shuffled out of our heavy coats and boots in the mudroom, then joined the others in the kitchen, where Rosalie was heating milk for chocolate. Alice stopped whipping cream long enough to hand Bella a bar of chocolate and a vegetable peeler. "Make shavings," she instructed.

Bella began shaving chocolate into curls and I stood next to her, leaning my elbows on the kitchen island. She was still prettily flushed, and she had taken off her hat and her hair was in a messy braid down her back. I pulled her braid, earning a sideways kick in the rear, then I pulled off the hair tie and began unwinding the braid. "Stop," she said, grabbing the hair tie and pulling her hair back through it to make a ponytail.

I pulled it back out. "I like it down," I whispered, smiling. She tried to grab the hair tie back but I held it over my head, out of her reach. She gave up and went back to her task.

I stood behind her and cupped my hand over her ear before whispering, "I like kissing you in a dark hallway when everyone else is asleep." She blushed pink to her hairline again. I heard Esmé and Carlisle approaching the kitchen and moved away from her, opening cupboards and looking for the mugs. As Esmé came in the room, I saw her take note of Bella's flushed face and messy hair. Rosalie poured the cocoa into the mugs, Alice and Bella garnished them, and we all headed to the family room for a round of Pictionary.


	19. Chapter 19

**Chapter 19, _in which Edward and Bella eat s'mores and make out_**

That night, there was no point in even attempting to sleep: I lay in bed and waited for Jasper's breathing to slow down and even out, and the rest of the house to fall silent. At the earliest moment I felt sure that the entire house was asleep, I kicked back the covers and crept silently from the room, gingerly closing the door behind me. I sneaked downstairs into the living room, and there she was: Bella was kneeling in front of the fireplace, building up the died-down fire with kindling, pine cones, and logs. She was wearing long, wide-leg black jersey pants and, nice, another camisole. I had been wondering if she was going to be swathed in flannel but the girls had the heat cranked high enough in here you'd never know we were in a mountain house.

"Hi," I whispered.

She looked over her shoulder at me and smiled.

"Hi yourself."

I motioned to a small sofa off to one side of the fireplace and whispered,

"Here, help me move this." She came over and helped me shove the sofa into place in front of the fire.

"Hungry?" I asked.

"My treat tonight," she replied. "Look."

She had a small bag of fancy marshmallows, two chocolate bars, and a box of graham crackers.

"S'mores!" I grinned. "Did you bring these with you?" I asked.

She giggled. "Yes."

"So….you were planning for our midnight snack?"

She glanced at me, uncertain. She didn't answer. I wondered how long in advance she had been thinking about meeting me in the middle of the night. It was the first thought on my mind when the ski trip idea came up.

She laid some graham crackers and a chocolate bar on a plate and placed it close to the fire. She picked up some long forked skewers.

"I found these in a drawer," she explained, stabbing a marshmallow onto one and handing it to me.

She impaled the other and we sat down on the floor, close to the fire, leaning our backs against the sofa.

"How do you like your marshmallows?" she asked.

"I like them evenly golden on all sides and melted in the center. How do you like yours?"

"I kind of like them burnt," she said.

I scoffed at this. "Loser mentality. You should aim higher."

Once the marshmallows were toasted, we took graham crackers, lined them with a melty piece of chocolate, and squashed the marshmallow with another cracker. We sat down on the couch to savor the s'mores. I leaned back and extended my bare feet to warm them by the fire as I ate, and Bella sat upright next to me with her feet tucked under her. We weren't touching, but she was so close to me that my left arm and leg seemed tense and aware.

I finished my s'more and started licking the melted chocolate and marshmallow off my fingertips. Bella, still eating the last bite of hers, watched me intently. When she glanced up and met my eye I gazed back at her, and she didn't look away. I grabbed her left hand and looked at her fingertips. Two fingers and her thumb were covered in chocolate. Impulsively, I lifted her hand to my mouth and sucked on her finger. She watched me, not meeting my eyes now, but suddenly breathing harder. I looked down at her breasts as they rose and fell. I sucked on another finger and finally licked her thumb. Then bit it, gently. I had no idea what I was doing but it was making me dizzily exhilarated. Her lips were parted and her breath sounded shaky. Finally she glanced up at me again, then looked at my mouth.

"Hold still," she whispered.

She put her hands on my shoulders and pulled me to face her, leaned in, and licked the corner of my mouth with the tip of her tongue. "Chocolate," she whispered. I groaned and leaned in to kiss her.

"Don't move," she said, and, closing her eyes, she ran her tongue over my upper lip. I slowly leaned my head sideways on the sofa cushions, and she did the same. She licked me again. I didn't move, I just let her tongue explore my lips, then finally I couldn't bear it and I met the tip of her tongue with mine. She allowed that, but didn't take my tongue into her mouth. She just let the tip of her tongue play with mine, until I thought I would lose my mind. I felt around for a pillow and came across a throw blanket, which I pulled over my lap to disguise my too-obvious excitement. She smiled against my lips. I wondered if she saw.

I closed my eyes and she lifted her hand to my cheek, caressing me. Using two fingertips, she slowly traced my cheekbone, my jawbone, smoothed my forehead, traced my nose, touched my eyelids, kept gently touching and exploring my face. The sensation of it was entrancing. I half-opened my eyes and began tracing her face, brushing my thumb over her freckles, memorizing her nose, tracing her eyebrows. I don't know how long we sat there, just gently touching one another's faces.

Finally, I whispered, "I like you." _There it was. Not so hard._

"You didn't like me at first." This caught me off guard. I swallowed. _Confess._

"No, I was angry at you."

"Why?"

"For making me want you so badly."

She did not speak right away as she took that in. Then, "In chemistry class, that first day, you looked like you wanted to kill me."

I winced. "Did I?"

She chuckled. "Then, at Homecoming, you totally Mr. Darcied me."

"What?"

She intoned, lowering her voice to imitate a man: "Tolerable, I suppose…but not handsome enough to tempt me."

I laughed, knowing what she meant—the "ugly duckling" comment—but not recognizing the reference. "So you did catch that. But what is that you're quoting?"

"_Pride and Prejudice, _of course."

"I haven't read it."

"Oh dear." I made a mental note to pick up a copy.

"I didn't mean it," I murmured.

"Then why would you say it?"

"I was trying to get Emmett to leave me alone."

She smiled. "I like Emmett," she said, nodding approvingly.

"But you like me more, right?"

She looked shy. "Yes," she whispered.

"Do you _like_ like me?"

She met my eyes, then looked away. "Yes."

"How much?" I queried.

"Too much."

I waited.

"More than you like me."

That was nonsensical. "You're wrong."

It was my turn. I planted my lips on hers, then licked at her, asking for admission. She parted her lips and I let my tongue wander in, finding her tongue and wrapping around it. I snaked my arms around her waist and pressed her against me. She was limp in my arms, like an actress in a 1930s movie. No resistance. It thrilled me.

Then we heard…the sound of a toilet flushing upstairs. She leapt up off the couch, bobbling so that I grabbed her elbow to steady her.

"Oh no," she moaned.

"What? It's fine. Just stay still for a moment."

"No, what if it's Alice? She'll see I'm not there."

I shrugged. "So? It's OK."

She shook her head. "I want this to be a secret."

"What?"

"It'd be better that way."

"What? Why?"

"Because…because I have a feeling I'll get to spend more time with you that way."

"What?"

She looked impatient. "I'll explain later. I'm going." She leaned down and kissed my cheek.

"Sleep well," she drawled, teasingly. Then bolted upstairs.

I lay back on the couch, running a hand though my hair. Holy crow…now what? I was not ready to go back and lie in the same room with Jasper with an enormous hard-on. I had to do something. There was a bathroom down here…could I take a shower? What time was it? Fuck it, I was taking a shower. A cold shower. That's what people did in cases like this, right?


	20. Chapter 20

**Chapter 20, **_**in which there's trouble at the lodge**_

When I rolled downstairs next morning, I discovered that the girls had already taken off. "Rosalie wanted to get her board waxed," Esmé told me as she offered me a bowl of oatmeal with raisins. "They said they'll meet up with you before your lesson."

I was a perfectly competent skier, but I was actually a skier and not a snowboarder like the rest of my siblings. Or, age cohort. Emmett, Alice, and I had been taught from an early age on skis, and while Emmett converted to a snowboard as soon as he could talk our parents into it and Alice had made the switch a few years ago, I was pretty good by then and I didn't really want to have to start over. However, this was Bella's first time skiing, and she was taking a snowboarding lesson, so I suddenly developed an urge to finally learn to snowboard. Otherwise, I wouldn't see her all day, and what was the point of that?

I headed out with Carlisle, Emmett, and Jasper. When we got to the resort, the three of them immediately headed to the gondola to get up to the back side of the mountain. I headed for the bunny slopes, where I found Bella loitering in front of the roped-off beginner lesson area. She was dressed in snow white board pants, a snow white jacket, and metallic gold boots and was carrying a hot pink board.

"Swan. What the hell are you wearing?" I asked her by way of greeting.

She held up her arms and turned from side to side to give me a better look.

"You like?" she asked. "I borrowed it from Jessica."

"Well, from the knees up it's pretty good—you look like Princess Leia on the ice planet of Hoth."

She nodded. "I'm gonna kick your ass today, Darth," she said, referring to the fact that I was dressed head to toe in black. "By the way…Hoth? You are exposing your inner nerd."

"But those boots," I shuddered. "What did Alice have to say?"

"I think she's inside the gift shop buying a can of spray paint."

I looked at my watch. "Shall we?" I asked, gesturing towards the lesson area.

"Let's," she said, swinging around and hitting me on the leg with her board.

"Ow," I complained.

"Oo, sorry."

After falling down the hill all morning and taking me with her about a third of the time (and a couple of randoms once or twice), Bella was ready to call it a day and head inside the lodge. I, on the other hand, really wanted to switch back to my skis and take a couple of real runs down the mountain. So we called Alice, who was also ready for a break, and she came to meet up with Bella while I went back up with Jasper. Forty-five minutes later, Jasper and I turned back up at the lodge. We weaved in through the crowds to the lounge where we had left Bella and Alice to drink hot chocolates. Jasper spotted them standing near the fireplace, and I saw they were talking to a guy with a blond ponytail, whose back was towards us. Alice had a look on her face that someone who did not know her well might not recognize as irritation. The guy walked away from them before we reached them.

"Who was that?" Jasper asked Alice.

"I don't know, some forward guy. I didn't think he was ever going to give up pestering us."

Jasper looked in the direction blond ponytail had walked away, but he had disappeared into the crowd.

"Hi," Bella said to me, smiling.

"Hi yourself," I smiled back.

We all spent a few minutes debating where we should go to get lunch, but before we had reached a decision, Ponytail reappeared, holding three hot toddies in clear glass mugs.

"Here you are, ladies," he purred. I stared at him in disbelief, while Alice and Bella demurred politely. Jasper, on the other hand, smoothly took a mug and said, brightly, "Thanks, guy."

Ponytail scowled at him. As Jasper was slurping a sip, I smirked at him. "Careful, dude, you might wake up naked in his bed later."

Jasper spit his sip of hot toddy back into the cup and said, "Uh, no thanks, dude," handing it back to Ponytail.

"Who's this asshole?" Ponytail asked the girls.

"He's my boyfriend," Alice said sweetly, tilting her head to one side.

"And him?" This he directed to Bella, tilting his head at me but not looking at me.

"I'm _her_ boyfriend," I answered, putting my arm around Bella and noting her cheeks going all pink. We'd never used that word before.

He leered at her, and then shifted his gaze to me. "Don't I know you from somewhere?"

"Do you use that line on all the boys?" I smirked back.

"I know who you are. From Bishop O'Dea."

For once I was too surprised to give a smart answer.

I looked hard at him, imagining him with short hair and a tie, and realized I did recognize him. John? James.

He nodded appraisingly at me, and then let his eyes wander down and up.

"Ewww," Alice burst out.

"Dude, take a hike," said Jasper, squaring his body to face him. James smiled at Jasper and cocked his head.

"Enjoy the drinks," he said smoothly, setting them down on a table nearby. He sauntered off towards the bar again.

"Oh my god, who the hell _was_ that guy?" Alice fumed.

"He was a senior when we were freshmen. D'you remember him, Jazz?"

"Nope."

"He kind of had a reputation for being a perv."

"_Really._"


	21. Chapter 21

**Chapter 21, **_**in which James gets his comeuppance**_

On the way out to get lunch, Bella hung back as Alice and Jasper walked ahead.

"Edward," she hissed.

"What?" I slowed down to walk with her.

"You can't go around telling people you're my boyfriend."

For a moment I was taken aback, but I remembered that cute blush on her cheeks when I had said it. Plus, she sure didn't look mad about it right now, even though she was apparently trying to look severe. I decided to go for nonchalance.

"Oh no? Hm, I thought you kind of liked that." She tried to keep her lips pursed but a smile was breaking through. I continued. "Is this part of your ridiculous 'keep it secret' plan?"

"I tried telling Alice you were just being chivalrous, but she didn't believe me," she complained.

"Of course not."

"So I told her to keep it to herself. And to tell Jasper to."

She proceeded to explain that she did not want any parentals policing the situation, quite literally in the case of her dad. The cat was pretty much out of the bag, I retorted. She conceded that the cat was out of the bag with my siblings, but she was still drawing a line with my folks. And, she said, there was no upside in being _obvious _about it in front of even my brothers and sisters. OK, whatever, I could humor her.

Alice glanced back over her shoulder at us. I shrugged at her, splaying out my hands. "We'd better catch up with them, then," I told Bella. "This is highly suspicious."

###

That evening, Carlisle and Esmé took us all out for dinner. In the afternoon, on the last run of the day, Emmett had fallen badly and re-injured his shoulder, which he had dislocated during the summer. He went home early with Esmé and Carlisle to rest; he couldn't afford a midseason shoulder injury.

The rest of us stayed out to go hang at the Albion, which was an English-style pub not far from the ski resort, a rabbit warren–like den of rooms with darts, pool tables, even board games you could check out from the bar, lots of tables and a few cozy fireplaces. The drinking age in British Columbia is nineteen, so none of us was quite there but Jasper had a fake ID and could pass for older anyway, so he got a bracelet that allowed him to order drinks. He managed to order a bourbon (neat) for himself, a gimlet for Rosie, and Bailey's on the rocks for Alice and Bella. I had lost the designated-driver ro-sham-bo match, so I was drinking Coke.

So, Rosalie loves to shoot pool, now that Emmett has made her such an expert at it. Even before we got our drinks, she had put her name up on a chalkboard in the other room to play the next winner. I don't know why she even bothered with the blackboard, as she would have no trouble weaseling into any table for a game because Rosalie is smoking hot in just the way your average Joe likes: long blond hair, green eyes, long legs, generous rack, full pink lips. It was kind of entertaining to see guys falling all over themselves at the sight of her. Rosalie also loved to work it, especially when Emmett wasn't around and she could flirt outrageously without making him sulk. While the rest of us were lounging around a table, talking, she disappeared to the next room for a spell.

After a while Rosalie stopped back by our table. "I think I'm going out for a smoke—disgusting habit, I know, I know—I need a break from this guy who will _not_ stop pestering me." She sighed dramatically.

"Who?" Alice asked, scanning the room.

Rosalie pointed discreetly at the end of the bar.

"That one at the end," she said, indicating her suitor: leather jacket and blond ponytail. "I think he's insisting on buying me a drink, maybe I'll disappear for a few minutes."

Bella warned her, "Oh no! Rosalie, that guy was bothering us earlier. He is super creepy. He went to school with Edward and Jasper."

"He was already trying to buy _them _drinks earlier today," Jasper told her, nodding towards Alice and Bella and shrugging, his tone slightly smug. He was winding her up. Rosalie hated when any other girls got attention.

"_Really._" She put one hand on her hip. "Excuse me," she said, heading back towards the pool tables.

"Rosalie! Don't drink anything he gives you!" Bella called after her, sounding worried.

Rosalie smiled dismissively back at her over one shoulder, then tossed her head as she stalked back into the next room.

"Don't worry, Rosalie can take care of herself," Jasper told her.

Half an hour later, my cell rang. It was Rosie. "Hey, I'm at the pool tables. Could you guys come in here a minute?"

We all got up to go see. She was standing next to the farthest table with her arm around James, who looked beyond sloppy drunk—eyes glazed over, babbling incoherently.

"Could you guys take him? He's having a little trouble standing up."

"Looks like he got the wrong end of a spiked cocktail," Jasper commented drily.

"Oh my god, _was_ he trying to slip you something? What, did you… _swap drinks _with him?" Bella gestured to two cocktails sitting on a shelf on the wall near the pool table and looking wide-eyed at Rosalie as if she were James Bond.

"Swap drinks? No, I have no idea if there was anything wrong with the drink he bought me. I just slipped something into his."

Sometimes I wondered if Rosalie was an actual sociopath.

Bella gaped. She looked around and whispered, "You _gave _him a _rufie_?"

"I prefer to say I slipped him a mickey. He was getting fresh," Rosalie murmured, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

"Why do you even _have_ those things?" Bella hissed. Rosalie was blowing Bella's mind.

Rosalie shrugged. "Self-defense. You know, I just carry some in my purse, along with my mad money, hat pin, and rape horn. A girl can't be too careful these days."

"_You_ have the rape horn?" Jasper asked. "I've been wondering where that thing was."

She sighed. "You can't carry it without a purse, _Jasper._ It's too bulky to fit in your pocket."

Alice chimed in. "That's right, plus you'll just confuse your attacker. Like, 'Is that a rape horn in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?'"

We had shuffled him away from the pool tables, but some players were still staring at us. Rosalie waggled her fingers at them. "Can't handle his liquor," she called over. Everyone looked away, politely. _The Canucks are so polite, god bless them._ _We should move up here. Also, pretty girls can get away with murder. Literally. _She turned back to us. "OK, anyway, but what are we going to do with him?"

Jasper and I were completely holding him up now. His head lolled back, and Jasper propped it back up.

"We? What do you mean 'we,' kemosabe?" he asked Rosalie.

Bella made a stifled sobbing sound, and I looked over at her to see she was desperately trying not to dissolve into giggles. Her eyes were filled with tears of mirth.

"You know, Rosalie, this is just the kind of shenanigan that got us sent to Catholic school," I pointed out.

"Bring 'im over here," Rosalie sighed, heading for some chairs lined up against the wall in a dark corner of the room. We sat him down in one chair and propped his feet up on another, leaning him back. His mouth hung open.

With a quick glance around, Rosalie took out her lipstick and traced a backward "L" on his forehead. Then she expertly freshened her lips with the lipstick and kissed him on the cheek. "Goodnight, sleeping beauty."

"OK, let's go." We walked swiftly through the pub single file and out into the sharp, cold night. When we had reached the parking lot, the uncontrolled laughter began.

"No, keep going, Bella," hissed Rosalie, pulling on Bella's arm and wiping her own eyes, when Bella, giggling helplessly, tried to sit down on someone's bumper. The car alarm went off, which sent us into more fits of laughter as we stumbled back to our car. By the time we got there, Bella and Rosalie were walking arm-in-arm and cackling.


	22. Chapter 22

**Chapter 22, **_**in which Edward asks Bella some personal questions**_

When we arrived home, it appeared Carlisle and Esmé had long since gone to bed. Rosalie went straight upstairs. I wondered whether or not she was going to fill Emmett in on her evening's adventures. Jasper and Alice soon followed, leaving Bella and me alone. I rebuilt the fire and came and sat next to her on the couch.

We sat quietly for a few minutes, waiting to make sure everyone was really going to bed and staying there. I twisted a lock of her hair around my finger and stroked my thumb over it, feeling its silkiness. The house stilled, and I pushed her hair away from her neck, draping it over her far shoulder.

"Not hungry?" she asked, glancing up at me and then looking at my mouth.

"Not for food," I said.

As I kissed down her neck, I could feel her pulse pounding under my lips.

She shivered.

"Are you cold?" I asked.

"No."

I smiled.

She said, shyly, "I love how you kiss me."

I felt an almost-pain in my chest. "I love kissing you."

"This seems too good to be real," she whispered. Her eyes were closed.

I smiled again. I felt the same way.

"I mean, look at you," she said, opening her eyes to look sidelong at me.

"What do you mean?"

"You're…too handsome for me," she complained. "I'm so…ordinary. You're so beautiful it hurts."

I was shocked. "You're not ordinary."

She snorted. I propped myself up on my elbow.

"It's true. You don't see yourself very clearly, if that's what you think. You're the opposite of ordinary. If you don't believe me, look how Tyler and Mike are falling over themselves to be near you."

"Not Tyler, remember?"

"Oh, right. Well, you've still got Mike. And I've noticed there are a few others."

"That's just 'cause I'm the new girl," she said.

"Well, I can't keep my eyes off you. I've never felt this way about anyone." Her self-deprecation made me feel unusually frank.

"Have you had a lot of girlfriends?" She sounded falsely casual, like she had been waiting for the right moment to ask.

_Uh-oh. Here we go._

"Not really. No. Not at all," I told her.

Her eyebrows shot up.

"How can that be?"

I shrugged. "Well, I did spend two years at an all-boys' school, remember?"

She smiled. "I was happy about that. But still…you must have had someone."

"Really not. I kind of went out with this girl, Tanya, in summer camp…in eighth grade…but only for a couple of weeks."

"That's it? That's crazy."

I shrugged again. "Girls sometimes like me…but usually I don't like them back. I find them kind of dumb."

"That doesn't stop most guys."

"I'm not most guys."

"Evidently not."

"But what about you? You must have had boyfriends?" I braced myself.

She smiled a small smile.

"Nope."

"Oh come on…you must have had one or two."

Now it was her turn to shrug. "The ones who liked me were never the right ones. And, like _you _said, I never felt this way about anyone before."

"Hmm." I still wasn't completely satisfied. I wanted to know.

"So," I whispered, leaning my head close to her ear and slipping a hand around her waist, under her camisole. "You're a virgin?" I asked. She looked sidelong at me again, and then closed her eyes.

"Yes," she breathed, melting back into the sofa cushions. I brushed my lips along her collarbone as my fingers stroked along the curve of her waist and the swell of her hip. Her skin was so soft.

She sighed a shaky breath. She seemed to be coming undone, which made me bolder. I brushed back her heavy hair and kissed the hollow below her ear. My fingertips wandered up to graze the underside of her breast.

"I want to be your first," I murmured. I was discovering that telling her what I really felt was making me high. A shivery wave of possessiveness washed over me. "I can't bear the idea of anyone else having you."

She was breathing so heavily now I wondered if she was freaked out. I didn't want to scare her.

"I mean, when you're ready."

She opened her eyes and met mine. We looked at each other hungrily for a long minute.

"You'll be the first to know," she smiled.

"I have to warn you, though," I said. "I've never done… _that _before. So it's going to be a shit show."

She burst out giggling and after a moment I started laughing too. I lay back lengthwise on the sofa and pulled her on top of me. Her mouth still tasted sweet from the Bailey's earlier. We lay there and kissed for ages, my hard-on fully pressing into her belly—I knew she could feel it, but now I didn't care at all.


	23. Chapter 23

**Chapter 23, **_**in which Edward and Bella get caught in the hot tub**_

Saturday I spent the morning on the green runs with Bella, which was kind of like aiding a paraplegic, and the afternoon with Rosalie and Jasper on the blacks. Bella and Alice went home around noontime to keep Emmett company, and Bella cooked a big delicious mess of spaghetti and meatballs and garlic bread for dinner as a thank-you for bringing her along on the trip. After dinner, we had a horror movie fest. Carlisle and Esmé joined us for _The Shining, _and then turned in. After they left, we put on _The Silence of the Lambs_ and Bella sidled up next to me on the couch.

After we had watched for a while, she leaned over and whispered, "Oh, I forgot to tell you—on Thanksgiving, Jacob was asking me about that thing down at the Strawberry Bay dig site."

"He was?"

"Yeah, I guess Sam told him about it. I mean, he knew I was down there with someone."

I looked at her.

"And he was asking about who I was with."

"Did you tell him you were with Freddie?" I smiled.

"Well, I wasn't sure what name to say. I figured if he suspected it was you, he might think Sam had gotten your name a little wrong, but then I wasn't sure if he even thought it was you..."

I considered this. "'Oh what a tangled web we weave,'" I whispered.

"But in the end I just said my lab partner, and then I distracted him."

I wondered how she had done that.

When the movie was over, Emmett popped in _The Evil Dead. _I looked at my watch. It was almost midnight. I leaned over to Bella and whispered:

"Wanna go in the hot tub with me?"

"Yes."

"OK, I'll leave first, and then you follow. Less _obvious._"

"OK."

"10 minutes."

I rose, stretched, yawned, and mumbled something about going to bed. No one paid attention. Once out of the room, I sprinted upstairs and got into my swimsuit. I grabbed a few towels from the closet, and crept downstairs. The hot tub was outside, on the deck. It was freezing out there. I hung the towels on some hooks by the door, pushed and folded the cover back, and jumped in, checking the heat and turning on the jets. _Ah, nice._

Bella showed up a few minutes later. She was wearing a short cotton robe, which she hung up next to the towels. Underneath she had on a dark green tankini top and boy shorts. I was disappointed at the amount of coverage, but it suited her. She had wound her hair up at her neck into a messy bun, but some tendrils were escaping. I admired her long coltish limbs as she climbed into the tub and sat next to me. I found her hand under the water and squeezed it, and then leant my head back. She did the same.

"Look at all the stars," she whispered.

I turned my head to look at her. I felt like I would never get tired of looking at her, drinking her in.

She stretched out her legs, brushing her foot against mine. She brushed it again. We sat there, gazing at each other now, and enjoying the sensation of our feet and legs tangling together. Finally I disentangled our fingers and ran my fingertips up her thigh, under the water. First the outside of her thigh, and then the inside. Her skin underwater felt warm and silky. I put my hand on her throat and leaned over to kiss her mouth. Then I kissed along her jawline, making her moan. Those noises she made went straight to my groin. "Bella," I whispered, kissing the hollow under her ear.

As if I had sprung a trap, she suddenly threw one leg over me and straddled me. I sucked in a sharp breath as she pressed herself right down on my hard-on. "Bella," I whispered again, adding, perhaps unnecessarily, "I want you so badly." There was something about this whole situation—surrounded all day and night by my family, wearing these bulky ski clothes—that was incredibly frustrating at the same time that it was exciting to have Bella near me for days and nights on end. It appeared she was feeling something similar. She wound her fingers in my hair and kissed me, hard. Her mouth opened to my tongue and I found hers, for a moment, before she began sucking my tongue and arching to press her hips against me. I was about to make her stop that before I jizzed right in the tub, when suddenly we heard voices approaching. _Shit. Fuck. Shitfuck._ My fucking siblings were heading out for a soak. Bella sprang off my lap to the far side of the tub. A few moments later, the glass door slid open. Emmett appeared, carrying a flask and plastic cups, and boomed,

"Oh hey…there you are….I thought you went to bed…"

Bella and I, still breathing heavily, looked at each other in horror as the four of them trouped outside. Without warning, Bella bolted out of the tub, grabbed a towel, and disappeared into the house. I started to stand up and realized I couldn't climb out in front of them in the state I was in.

"Geez, Teddy, what'd you do to her?" Emmett asked.

I ignored him, not even bothering to tell him not to call me Teddy. "Jasper!" I snarled, through clenched teeth. "Give me a towel."

Jasper seemed to take umbrage at my tone. "Get your own damn towel," he shot back.

"Alice…" I pleaded.

Realization dawned on them. Rosalie guffawed. "Oh ho, Bella's got our Eddie a little worked up."

Alice threw me a towel and I wrapped it around my waist as I clambered out of the tub amid hoots.

"Shut up, all of you," I groaned as I fled.

"Go get 'er, tiger!" Emmett hollered after me. "Don't let her leave you hanging like that." I cursed all of them, except maybe Alice.


	24. Chapter 24

**Chapter 24, **_**in which Edward **_**finally**_** gets in Bella's pants**_

I rushed into the house, wondering where Bella had gone. Was she heading up to her room, embarrassed? Distraught? No, no...yes! She was waiting for me in the hallway, her back up against the wall. I placed my hands on either side of her head, losing my towel, and leaned in to kiss her, dropping quickly from her lips to her throat to her breasts.

"Where? Where?" she gasped, which I took to mean a request for more privacy, always in short supply around my family, it seemed. I wrapped my arms around her and we crashed down the hallway together trying doorknobs…bedroom? No, laundry room…broom closet…brooms and mops crashing to the floor…Emmett calling out, "Everything OK in there?" Finally we found a kids' room full of bunk beds and twins. It would have to do. I slammed the door shut and locked it, and then pushed her up against the wall again. I started devouring her neck and kissing the tops of her breasts above her swimsuit, whispering, "Please, Bella. Please, please." I was not exactly sure what I was asking for.

She shoved me over towards one of the twin beds, pushed me down, and crawled on all fours to hover over me, kissing my chest and neck. Then she began to kiss my mouth in earnest and at the same time lowered her hips to press her crotch right against mine. It felt fucking fantastic. I grabbed her ass with both hands and helped her grind into me, settling into a frantic rhythm. She began moaning against my lips, and then as her moans grew louder she buried her face in the crook of my neck to try to stifle them. Hearing her making those sounds, I couldn't hold out anymore. As I spurted my release, I couldn't help bucking my hips and crying out as the pleasure became almost too intense, and her body was immediately wracked by shudders and she sighed in an appreciative way that made me feel pretty sure she had just gone over the edge. She flopped down so that she lay next to me, one leg still thrown over my still-throbbing cock and her hot little sex pressed against my hip. We lay there smiling and pressing against one another, enjoying the aftershocks.

After a couple of minutes I pulled the cover loose from under her, and pulled it over us both, snuggling with her under it. Her suit was damp, and I didn't want her to get up because she was cold. I let my fingertips trail down her shoulder and slender arm, and then across her waist and the side of her hip.

"Did you…I mean, it seemed like you…"

She smiled. "Yes."

"Do you do that a lot?"

My mind was flashing back to a radio sex talk show I had heard one night, driving back home late from somewhere. A caller was asking what was the best way to make a girl come, and they had said the best way was to find a girl who already knew how to come—because some didn't have it figured out—and to find out from her what worked. But somehow my question hadn't come out right.

Luckily Bella giggled. "Lately, yes."

I couldn't believe what she was saying. "Do you mean you…do you…"

She covered her face with both hands. But I wasn't about to give up now.

"What do you think about when you…?"

A muffled moan. She took one hand off her face and peeked at me. "You," she whispered. Now my face was going hot. _She thought about me and she touched herself. _I was already a sticky mess in my swim trunks, and now I was getting hard again.

"Show me," I whispered back.

"No."

OK, I wouldn't press it now, but she _was_ going to show me sometime. We were quiet for a minute.

"Can I touch you?" I whispered, letting my fingertips wander down to her bikini bottoms.

"Yes," she breathed.

I moved my hand to the inside of her thigh—which is what had set this whole thing off in the first place. I moved it up slowly, enjoying the silky feel of her skin there, until I reached the crotch of her boy shorts. I tugged it aside and found my fingers in her folds. She was so slippery and wet that I couldn't help saying, "oh!" in surprise.

"I'm sorry," she mumbled, sounding mortified. I kissed her bare shoulder.

"Don't be silly, I love that you're so turned on for me. It turns me on more." If that were possible.

"What about you?" she asked, suddenly making full eye contact. "Do you…touch yourself?"

"You have no idea, Bella. I _abuse _myself. Daily. More than once. I think about you all the time."

"What do you think about, exactly?" she asked.

I laughed. Now I knew how she felt when I asked her. "Stuff you're too young to know about."

"Right," she drawled.

"Maybe I'll tell you someday," I promised. "I don't want to corrupt you."

"Uh-huh."

"OK, I do want to corrupt you."

I kept my eyes locked on hers as I grabbed the waistband of her bikini bottoms with both hands and eased them down. She helped wriggle out of them. I propped myself up on one elbow and watched her face as I slipped my hand back between her legs. I explored those slippery, cushiony folds—feeling to see if I could find the spot that would make her feel good, and then letting my fingers slide down. I had learnt a thing or two from Tanya, but that was a long time ago and we hadn't gone very far. Bella was so wet that my middle finger just slipped inside, just past the first knuckle. I gently pushed in a little deeper. I began to stroke her, inside. Bella moaned and pushed her hips up.

"You feel so good," I told her. "I want to be inside you."

She reached her hand down and palmed my dick, which was by now rock solid again, and then squeezed it, feeling for the contours of it. "Bella," I said, helplessly. She started to slip her fingers into my waistband, but I grabbed her hand and stopped her.

"It's a mess in there."

"I don't care."

"No, really, it's a mess."

"It doesn't matter."

"Next time," I told her, and began kissing her so she couldn't argue. She relaxed, took my hand and placed my fingers where she wanted them, and with her hand over mine she started pressing my fingers in a slow, hard rhythm. I followed the rhythm she set with her hand and then her hips, gradually stroking her faster, and she moved her hand away and grasped the sheets. She was fully writhing her hips and moaning, and I felt like I was on the verge of coming just watching her. Finally she started shuddering again and crying out, louder this time since unmuffled, and when she reached over and pressed her hand against my cock again it was enough to send me over. I rolled over on my back and we both lay there for a while breathing heavy and then not so heavy, until finally I decided I really had to go get myself cleaned up.

"Come upstairs," I whispered.

"OK."

We crept down the hallway, past the TV room where _Evil Dead _was back in play, and to the top of the stairs. I tugged on Bella's hand.

"I just have to wash up. Come sleep in my room," I suggested.

"No."

"Come on, Jasper can sleep somewhere else. It's fine," I told her.

"No, that's a bad idea. Go take a shower," she smiled at me, slipping out of my grasp and heading off towards her and Alice's room.

I reluctantly let her go and went into the bathroom to take a shower. At least it was warm this time. Progress.


	25. Chapter 25

**Chapter 25, **_**in which Edward takes Bella on a date and they have an unfortunate encounter**_

Sunday night upon arriving home from Whistler I had a telltale tickle in my throat, and by morning I had a full-blown miserable head cold that kept me out of school for that Monday and Tuesday. Lying around the house all day gave me some time to think about things with Bella, and what I thought was things were kind of moving along fast, barreling headlong really. Namely the fact that I had rounded third base without having actually tagged second. I kept thinking back to Jasper's advice, and I figured I was capable of reining things in. I didn't want Bella to end up feeling like I was pushing her. Although I didn't think I had really been pushing her. Had I been pushing her? She had been pushing me…and here I would start replaying the scene of Saturday night in my head.

Anyway, it seemed like the thing to do, so I called her up and told her I was taking her out Friday on a proper date. Like, dinner and a movie. In Port Angeles. I didn't want her to get the idea that our relationship was overly based on heavy petting. Also, I felt a little gypped that I hadn't tagged second, so I really wanted to rectify that omission.

Bella came down with the same cold on Wednesday and also missed two days of school, then had to do a make-up test on Friday at lunch, so by Friday night I had barely seen her all week except in class that day. We agreed I would pick her up on the early side, not only because Port Angeles was a bit of a drive and we were going to an early showing and grabbing dinner afterwards, but also I think because she wanted me to fetch her before her dad came home from work. I wondered what exactly she was telling him about her plans this evening.

The theater in Port Angeles was one of those big old-fashioned movie houses with one screen. They were showing a Nicolas Cage drama this week; we had not much choice in the matter, but this one was supposed to be halfway decent. We parked between the theater and the restaurant where I had made a reservation—La Bella Italia. We didn't have far to walk, but we barely made it to the movie on time because of all the kissing. First she gave me a peck on the cheek in the car that turned into some still-relatively-chaste kissing on the mouth and general nuzzling, and then as we walked down the street I gave into an urge to pull her into a darkened doorway and that turned into some French kissing, and then when we got to the theater it was like we had some sort of reaction to being together in a darkened room and we started kissing again with me leaning my back against the wall at the back of the theater before we had even found seats.

When the movie actually started, I figured we had better sit down. I started to lead her down the aisle to the middle, but she tugged on my hand and pointed to a stairway, cordoned off with a velvet rope and a small sign hanging from it that read, "balcony closed."

"How 'bout up there?" she asked. I craned my neck to get a look at the balcony.

"OK. Why not," I replied, and we climbed over the rope and went upstairs to the empty balcony and sat close to the front. The theater had been refurbished sometime recently so it had big comfy seats with arm rests that moved up and down, so we pushed up the arm rest and snuggled together, my arm around her shoulders and her head leaning against me. We watched the movie quietly for a few minutes, then I felt her fingertips slipping under the edge of my sweater and lightly caressing my waist. I glanced down at her, but she was still looking straight ahead. After a few more minutes her hand grew bolder, sliding up over my belly and up to my chest, her fingertips moving in gentle circles and touching the hair there, the planes of my chest, and finally one of my nipples. I was like a live wire around her, every sensation amplified. I whispered,

"I missed you this week. Did you miss me?"

She looked up at me with an innocent expression and asked, coyly, "Did you…_think_ about me?"

My cock twitched. I buried my nose in her hair and inhaled deeply.

"You smell good," I told her, wrapping my other arm around her and pulling her closer to me. Imitating her movements, I found the bottom edge of her sweater and slid my fingers under it, touching the smooth skin of her waist. I moved my hand slowly up her side until I reached the fabric of her bra. It was silken, not cotton as I had been expecting. I drew my fingertips along the underside of her breast over smooth silk.

She sighed, shakily. "You're not going to answer my question, are you."

"Mm. I don't think you answered _mine,_" I replied. I moved my hand to cup her breast, feeling its heavy weight in my palm. Bella had pretty little girlish tits that I found super appealing. Everything about her breast felt soft and silken except the nipple, which was hard. Mm. I brushed my thumb over it. It was jutting out against the silk, and what was that roughness at the top of her bra? Lace.

"I'll just have to ask you a different way, then," she told me.

I was so busy tracing my fingers along the lace at the top of her bra that I didn't notice her moving her hand down until it was resting at the top of my thigh closest to her.

"Do you think about this?" she asked, moving her hand to press with her palm against my cock. Pleasure. I smiled, leaning back against my chair back and looking straight ahead at the screen.

Her fingers stroked up my length, then squeezed gently. I couldn't help giving a little push with my hips. I glanced at her. She was looking at me intently.

Her fingers started fumbling with the top button of my jeans. I placed my hand over hers. "Bella."

She cast a glance around the darkened balcony. "There's no one here," she shrugged.

I looked around and saw she was right. I moved my hand away, and she continued unbuttoning, looking at me. When she had them all undone I stood at attention, as much as my boxer briefs would let me. She stroked me again, through my underwear, then slipped her hand inside. I sighed as she wrapped her fingers around me, squeezing tighter this time. Then she loosened her fingers and feathered them all the way up to the tip. She discovered the bead of wetness forming there, touching it with just one finger, then tracing circles over the tip of my cock. My leg started shaking slightly. When she squeezed me again and started moving her hand up and down, I stopped her.

"We don't want to make a mess."

"Hmmm."

She suddenly slipped down onto the floor, kneeling between my knees.

"What are you doing?"

"I thought we didn't want to make a mess."

I stared at her, and realized that not only was she talking about putting her mouth on my dick, she was also implying I should come in her mouth. That this girl was constantly surprising me was the understatement of a lifetime.

She began kissing me down there, starting halfway down and them moving up until she reached the head and planted a kiss there. Then she opened her lips and licked the tip. By now I was sitting bolt upright, one hand grasping the armrest and the other splayed on the empty seat next to me. I felt extremely vulnerable in this position, especially in a public place—somewhat secluded though it was—but perhaps more highly excited than I had ever been. She took me in her mouth, sucking lightly on the tip of my cock.

"Fuck, Bella…" I growled.

She smiled up at this, her lips wrapped around me, and then she swirled her tongue around me. I covered my face with my hands, then peeked out again so I could watch her. She started sucking again, then wrapped one hand around me and squeezed. My orgasm was sudden and hard, taking me so much by surprise that I accidentally pulled my hips back, pulling my cock out of her mouth, and shot my load in her hair.

"So good," I burst out, then stared at her in horror when I realized what had happened. She stared back at me, wide-eyed, before bursting out laughing. I pulled her up next to me and hugged her, grateful that she was not annoyed or grossed out. Not only did my girlfriend swallow, theoretically, but she had a sense of humor about my coming in her hair. For some girls, that might be a dealbreaker, I imagined.

"OK, now _I_'m the one who just has to go wash up," she whispered.

"I'm sorry. Hurry back," I said, buttoning up.

"There better not be anyone in the bathroom."

She started to get up, but suddenly slunk all the way down in her seat as if she was hiding. "Oh, shit," she said.

"What?"

"There are people up here," she hissed.

I looked behind us and noticed some guys sitting way in the back of the balcony.

"They weren't there before," I whispered. They must have come up here when we were a little…preoccupied.

"Shit," she said again.

"Look, do you want to just go?" I asked her. It wasn't like either of us had been paying one whit of attention to the movie.

"OK." We got up and walked quickly down the row of seats and down the stairs. I waited in the lobby near the doors while she popped into the bathroom to clean herself up. Just as she was coming out of the bathroom, another figure bounded down the stairs into the empty lobby. _Fuckety shit crap. _It was Jacob Black.

His eyes met mine, with a flicker of recognition, and then he scanned the lobby. When his eyes landed on Bella coming out of the bathroom, his face fell. "Bella," he said, accusingly.

She looked up and blanched.

He came towards her and grabbed her arm, roughly. "I came down here just to make sure that that wasn't really you. What the fuck, Bella?"

"Jacob…"

I jumped in. "Get your hand off her," I instructed him.

"Fuck you," he responded. She twisted her arm out of his grasp. "What the fuck, Bella, you were _sucking _his _dick_. In a _movie _theater_. _Who the fuck is this guy?" He was crowding her. I put my hand on his shoulder, and he swung his arm up to knock it off. I took a step towards him, lining my shoulder up with his, and he took a step back.

"Jacob, it really is none of your business." Bella sounded preternaturally calm.

"The fuck it isn't."

"This is Edward. You've met him before," she said patiently, as if talking to a child. I smiled. "It's OK," she assured him.

Jacob glared at me. "You fucking asshole," he fumed.

Bella broke in. "Jacob, calm down. It's OK. We're leaving now." She turned on her heel and walked out of the theater. I glanced back at Jacob, who still looked furious, and walked out after her. We walked down the street a little ways, and she let out her breath in a whoosh. She looked back.

"Thank goodness he's not following," she said.

I put my arm around her shoulders. "I'm sorry that happened," I told her.

"It's OK. He'll calm down."

"Do you think he's going to rat you out?"

She answered quickly, as if she had already considered that. "No. He'll calm down. He wouldn't do anything to hurt me," she said, sounding slightly unconvinced of that herself.

Then she added, "I think he'll be more angry at you."


	26. Chapter 26

**Chapter 26, **_**in which Edward and Bella get some dinner and then make out some more in the car**_

We walked over to La Bella Italia. My attempt at reining things in with Bella had not been confidence-inspiring, and the whole run-in with Jacob was certainly jarring, but I was determined to pull off just one normal date with Bella.

We were a little early for our reservation but it was not a problem getting a table. As we followed the hostess in, I noticed tables all along the far wall. "We'd like one of the banquettes, please," I requested. She led us to one, and as soon as the hostess left I slid onto the banquette next to Bella.

"Move over," I said.

"What are you doing?"

"I want to sit next to you." She slid over and I moved my water glass and silverware to the other side of the table.

"Plus what is it about girls always snagging the banquette seat?" I asked her.

"It's no mystery. We like to be able to look around at the other people." She glanced around the room and leaned over to whisper, "For example, Mike Newton, eleven o'clock."

I glanced in the direction she indicated and there he was, flanked by his parents, being led to a table in the middle of the room by the hostess. Once seated, he looked around the room and noticed us. Bella put up one hand in greeting. Mike smiled tightly at us.

"This is awkward," said Bella, looking over her menu. "Did I tell you that earlier this week when you were ill he asked me to the winter formal?"

"Oh he did, did he." I shot a dark look at Mike, who looked uncomfortable.

The waitress came and took our orders.

"So what did you tell Mike?" I asked.

"I said I already had plans to go."

"Oh yeah? Who with?"

"I didn't specify."

"Ah, OK. But who are you going with?" I whispered conspiratorially.

"You, dumbass. Weren't you telling your friend James that you're my boyfriend?"

"Yeah…" I said slowly. "I guess I was." I grinned at her.

"OK then," she said primly, placing her napkin on her lap.

"So that is one of my prescribed duties? As your boyfriend?"

"Yes."

I nodded slowly, as if she had just assigned me a dangerous mission. "I'll do it then. Anything else?"

"I'll make a little list."

"But if we do go to the dance together," I smirked at her, "the cat will really be out of the bag."

"We can go in a group. You know, with your siblings. I'll dance with your brothers," she said, inspecting her water glass as if there were something in it.

"_That_'s not weird. They'll all think we've inducted you into the cult."

She looked up at me through her lashes in a way that made my heart stutter. "I would totally join your cult," she simpered.

"That's the most romantic thing you've ever said to me," I simpered back. Her obsession with keeping this thing of ours a secret was becoming absurd but at the same time she was cracking me up.

"How are you going to explain away this to him?" I asked, gesturing to me, Bella, and our little table, and then to Mike.

"I'm not sure, I'm working on that."

"You're crazy, you know," I told her. "In the head."

The server came and brought our salads.

"So, that thing you did back in the theater," I began.

"What thing?" she asked, sweetly.

"You know, the thing."

"Oh, that thing. Did you like that?" she asked, casually, taking a bite of salad.

"Yes, I did like that thing. I liked it a lot." I looked intently at her. She was trying to play it off, but her cheeks were rosy and she wasn't making eye contact.

"Hmm," she managed to say.

"You've never done _that_ before?" I inquired. I was bewitched by her forwardness.

"Wasn't it obvious?" she smirked, finally looking at me again.

"Hmm, yes, I see what you mean. You might need some more practice." I gave her a lascivious look.

"Actually, I think _you _might need some more practice," she shot back.

I loved that quickness of hers. "That's right. Clearly I do. Could you help me with that?" I asked her.

"Perhaps." Now her cheeks were flaming and she had to drop her eyes again.

I started chuckling and then she started giggling.

Mike looked over at us, looking more miserable by the minute.

We carried on over our mushroom ravioli, when it arrived, chatting about the ski weekend, my old school, San Francisco, her holiday plans (which to my dismay were to go visit with her mom and mom's family for two weeks. I pushed that to the back of my mind to stew over later.). Eventually the Newtons finished their meal and got up to leave, much to Mike's relief I was sure. A few minutes later, while we were looking over dessert menus,

"Uh oh," whispered Bella. "Eleven o'clock."

I glanced over. Mr. Banner and a lady I assumed was his wife were being seated at the Newtons' recently vacated table.

_Crap. _I slid back to the other side of the table and put my back to him.

"What," Bella huffed. "Is all of Forks hanging out in Port Angeles tonight?"

"Well, why would they be hanging out in Forks?"

"Let's skip dessert," she suggested.

"Yeah, I have a better idea."

Driving home, a Muse song came on the car radio. Bella turned it up. "Undisclosed Desires."

"Who is this?" she asked me.

"Muse."

"I'm kind of embarrassed to admit this, but I do love this song," she explained, and proceeded to sing every word, slightly off-key, and also the instrumental parts.

_Please me  
>Show me how it's done<br>Tease me  
>You are the one<em>

I glanced over at her, smiling affectionately at her terrible singing. _How do you know when you've fallen in love with someone? _I wondered. I was well on my way to being in love with Bella Swan, if not there already.

# # #

I drove back to Forks, back to Bella's street, and then drove past her house.

"Where are we going?" she asked. Her street ended in a woodsy dead-end about a block from her house. I parked at the end, a spur jutting into the woods.

"I want to kiss you goodnight and I'm sure you don't want to do it in front of your house." I shifted into neutral, put on the parking brake, and turned off the headlights, leaving the car running so that we could have the heater and the radio.

She smiled at me. "Move over," I told her. "I'm coming to your seat."

"What? There's no room."

"Hoist yourself up for a sec, you can sit on my lap." Bella used the handle on the ceiling to hold herself up off the seat while I clumsily got one leg over the stick shift and slid over to the passenger seat.

"I thought I had called shotgun. What's with you always trying to horn in on my seat?"

"Here, sit down," I told her. She put her bottom on my lap.

"Not that way. Turn around."

"Oh, I get it," she said. She struggled to twist herself over until she was stradding me. My feet were jammed up in the footwell.

"Hang on," I said, feeling for the handle to push back the seat. I lowered the backrest while I was at it.

"You're so tall tonight."

"Sorry."

"I love that about you."

"Mm," I hummed, pulling her down for a kiss. We necked for a while. I caressed her back, at first, and then started feeling her up in front.

"I want to see you," I whispered, tugging at the bottom of her sweater. She looked at me for a moment, and then pulled the entire front of her sweater over her head so that her arms and shoulders were still covered but her chest was exposed. She was now sitting upright on my lap.

"That's a neat trick."

Her lacy little silk bra was pale ice blue. I caressed her breasts with both hands, again relishing the feel of her soft tits under the gossamer silk. I pinched her nipple lightly, making her moan, and then slid my arms around to pull her towards me so I could kiss her other nipple through the silk. I dragged my nose and cheek across the underside of her breast, and then started feeling around in back for the clasp.

"It's in front," she whispered as I fumbled around.

"What?"

She reached down between her breasts and unsnapped the clasp. The bra fell open, showing me her bare tits right at eye level.

I leaned my head back and grinned, and then looked up at her.

"What?"

"Look at you. You are so pretty," I told her.

She leaned down and kissed me, taking my tongue in her mouth and sucking it, and then I kissed down to her breasts and began licking and sucking at her nipples. She moaned more loudly now, and started undulating her hips against me. We were both wearing jeans, and with a double layer of the stiff fabric between us it seemed impossible to get the right angle, or something.

"Hold on," I whispered, and then unbuttoned my jeans and pulled them down to my thighs. We tried grinding against each other again, but I had to stop her because the seam of her jeans was hurting me.

"Let's get in the back seat," I suggested. She took her sweater off all the way to free her arms, and then climbed over the console into the back. I tried to do the same, but ended up having to use the doors.

"Sorry," I said about the burst of cold air as I slid onto the back seat next to her. There were no seat warmers back here and the leather was cold. I decided it might be better to try to use my hand again, so as I kissed her I started unbuttoning her jeans, and slid a hand into her panties, which were also silky, and down into her folds. Sopping wet, I noted with a hum.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"What do you think?" I answered.

"That's not fair for you," she pointed out.

I paused. "Take your jeans off, then."

She paused, and then shimmied out of her jeans. Then she straddled me again. The feel of her sex against mine, separated only by two very thin layers of fabric—thinner and more supple this time than the swim suits—was almost too much to handle.

'Wait, don't move," I said, feeling around for my jacket, which I had left up front. "Here," I told her, helping her put it on. That way I could still see her but she wouldn't freeze.

"OK," I said, pushing my hips against hers. She moaned my name. I pulled off my sweater and t-shirt and hugged her tight against me, feeling her bare tits against my bare chest. I remembered the scent she had left on my fingers that night at the ski house, and I lifted the finger I had put down her panties tonight to my nose and breathed her in. So good. I found her mouth and kissed her, and a few moments later I was coming, jolts of pleasure making me rock my hips harder into hers and make incoherent sounds, all of which seemed to bring on her crisis because she cried out almost immediately after. We sat there for a few minutes holding each other, and then I whispered,

"Sorry I keep going first."

"That's OK, I don't mind," she whispered back.

"I can't help it, you turn me on like crazy," I told her.

She shivered, and then felt around for her pants. She had to lie down on the back seat to get back onto them, pressing her feet against the door to lift up her hips.

I said, "I'm not sure why making out in a car is such an American cultural meme, this is totally uncomfortable."

"I think you're supposed to be driving a Chevy while attempting it. Maybe next time we should try my truck," she said, smiling. She re-clasped her bra and pulled her sweater over her head. I pulled up my jeans over my wet boxers and buttoned myself. I pulled her back sideways on my lap, her bottom on my lap this time and her feet on the back seat, and kissed her some more.

After a while, she whispered, "I should go."

"Let me walk you."

"No, Charlie might see."

"OK, let me trail you slowly with the car like an ax murderer."

"Sounds good."

I drove her a little closer to her house, and then she hopped out.

"Thanks for dinner," she said.

"You're welcome. That was a great movie."

I trailed her slowly with the car like an ax murderer, then once I saw she was inside I drove home.


	27. Chapter 27

**Chapter 27, **_**in which Edward goes over to Bella's house**_

The following Wednesday we had a random day off school for teacher development. Bella and I had vaguely talked about doing something together, but as soon as I woke up that morning I texted her.

_-What r u doing_

A minute later, the response came.

_-Sleeping_

_-In ur bed?_

_-Where else_

_-What r u wearing?_

_-Who IS this?_ she typed.

I cracked up.

_-R u alone_

_-Yes_

-_Want some company, _I wrote.

-_How much, baby?_

I cracked up again.

_-I'm coming over_

I took the world's fastest shower, pulled on a gray turtleneck and some cords, and drove over to Bella's. Just to be safe, I parked in front of a neighbor's house a few doors down. As I walked up to the door, Bella leaned out of an upstairs window.

"Hi," she called.

"Hi yourself," I smiled up at her.

"Door's open."

I caught a glimpse of a cheerful yellow kitchen and tidy, homey-looking living room as I bounded upstairs. Bella was picking up shoes from the floor when I came into her room. Her bed was made.

"You didn't give me much time to clean up," she mock-complained. Her hair was wet and freshly combed, and she was wearing a thin-gauge v-neck sweater and an a-line skirt. I smiled at the skirt. I hardly ever got to see her in one.

"I could come back later," I offered, smiling.

"No, stay," she smiled back.

"_Finally _I get to see your room," I mock-complained in turn.

"I've never seen yours, which is more remarkable considering the amount of time I've spent at your house."

True. She was always upstairs with Alice at my house or else downstairs with me in other parts of the house.

Her room, like the living room downstairs, was homey, but less tidy. Books overflowed from the smallish bookcase next to her bed, and CDs sat in random-looking stacks lined up on the floor against the wall. There weren't any clothes strewn on the floor, but there seemed to be a lot of shoes. I walked over and inspected the corkboard over her desk, which was cluttered with paraphernalia ranging back to childhood. She turned her back to me as she shut the window.

"What books do you have here," I wondered aloud, sprawling myself out on her narrow bed and checking out the bookcase. Lots of classics—including a particularly well-thumbed, falling-apart paperback copy of _Jane Eyre—_plus a good assortment of more recent well-received literary fiction. Then my eye was caught by a copy of _Fanny Hill _on the bottom shelf. Next to it was _Lady Chatterley's Lover, _and _Justine_ by the Marquis de Sade_._ Hm. A fan of the classics?

"This is quite a collection of dirty books you've got here," I remarked, laughing. "What's this…"—picking a fat volume up—"Ovid?"

"There are some titillating bits in there."

"Don't you have anything published later than Victorian times?"

She came over and sat on the bed. She pulled out _Little Birds_ and handed it to me_._

"I also have Henry Miller here somewhere, but I don't like him too well."

"Aren't you afraid your dad is going to find these?"

"Oh no," she said, shaking her head. "Charlie _never _comes in here."

"He shouldn't. He should be scared." I perused the shelf again.

I cocked an eyebrow at her. "You know, for a _virgin_ you have some pretty advanced reading material here."

She cocked an eyebrow back. "How would _you_ know?"

Touché. I picked up another volume: _The Story of O._

"This explains a lot, though," I commented, gesturing towards the shelf.

"He's my favorite writer," she volunteered, picking up Vladimir Nabokov's _Ada._

"Is this your favorite book?" I asked.

"No, I'm not _that _pervy. _Pale Fire._ Have you read that one?"

"Nope."

"It's amazing and totally funny at the same time. And I'm sure I don't even get _half _of it. He's beyond genius."

"Can I borrow it?" I had just finished _Pride & Prejudice. _The subject matter was a little girly for me, but I liked Austen's deadpan humor and detailed observation of social nuance. I also had a little crush on Elizabeth Bennett, just on the side.

"Sure," she said brightly. She found _Pale Fire_ on another bookshelf against the other wall and handed it to me.

I set Nabokov on the floor next to the bed and settled back on her pillows with the Anaïs Nin book she had handed me. I patted the bed next to me. As I scooted over to make room for her, I asked, "What's your favorite story in this book?"

She took it from me and flipped to find a story called "Runaway." I skimmed the first couple of paragraphs, and then handed the book to her.

"You read it to me," I requested. She shook her head.

"You read it to _me,_" she replied. She added, "I like to listen to your voice." She snuggled down so that her head was on the front of my shoulder.

I held the book in my other hand and read to her. It was the story of a Parisian man's fascination with the sixteen-year-old his flatmate picked up, brought home, and deflowered. About halfway through, her hand started wandering up my thigh.

"Do you want me to finish reading?"

"Yes, finish," she said. She didn't take her hand away, but she moved it carefully up to my stomach and caressed me there, through my sweater. When I finished the story, I leaned in to kiss her throat. I gently rolled us over so I was lying on top of her, keeping my weight on my elbows but letting my hard-on press into her thigh. I continued kissing her neck and behind her ear.

"I like that story," I whispered.

"Me too," she said.

"Why do you like it?" I asked her.

"Why do you?"

"Because her body sounds like yours." Slender and girlish… sweet, little breasts…white panties. "Are you wearing little white panties right now?" I asked. She giggled in a way that made me think I had guessed right. I had not been able to stop thinking about that silky bra and panties she had been wearing last Friday. I wanted to wrap myself in them. "What about your bra?" I asked, sliding a hand up her sweater. She had a stretchy camisole underneath, and, as I discovered when I reached her nipple, no bra.

"No bra?" I asked.

"I'm wearing a cami," she said, shrugging.

"Do you do that a lot?" She smiled, but didn't answer. Instead, she started kissing my neck.

"So tell me, Edward," she whispered—and hearing her say my name still gave me a thrill—"What do you think about when you think about me?" She wasn't going to let this go.

I cleared my throat. "Well," I began, "Sometimes I imagine I'm at a track meet…"

"Sorry to interrupt, but I wanted to tell you that seeing you running at that track meet that time was totally hot."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yes," she said firmly. "I like you in shorts and cleats."

"Spikes," I corrected.

"Spikes."

"Well you know what they say about the stars of track and field. We are beautiful people." That was from one of the perfect albums I had burnt for Bella.

She rolled her eyes. "I am going to have to write a letter to Belle & Sebastian and complain that they've given you a fat head."

"Anyway," she said. "You're at the track meet. What happens next?"

"I'm in the locker room, after. In the shower. And you're in there with me."

"In the men's shower?" she asked.

I nodded. "I like it when you're all wet," I explained. She blushed, and I realized the double meaning of what I'd just said.

"Your turn," I told her. "Just tell me one."

"Well," she said, burrowing her head in the crook of my shoulder so that I had to listen carefully to hear her, "I have this favorite storyline and now you're starring in it."

"Yeah? What role do I play?"

"Teacher," she answered.

"Teacher? Like one of our teachers at school?"

She wrinkled her nose. "Ew, no. I've never had a hot teacher at school. But I used to think about, maybe I would get to college and have this cute young TA…I'd go to office hours to discuss my essay, and seduce him. Or he'd seduce me."

"Which is better?"

She considered this. "Both good. Just depends on my mood."

"Mm." I nuzzled her neck with my nose. "Another," I said. I was collecting data.

"You said just one."

"Come on, you're on a roll. I like this game."

"Doctor," she said. Hm, another male authority figure.

"Doctor?"

"You know, candy striper and irresistible doctor."

"What about doctor and patient?" I asked.

"Mm, that could be good. Paper dress. Naughty."

"Hm, if you can wait, say, ten years, maybe I can make that one come true," I offered.

"Ten years? I don't think so."

She added, "I got options. Your dad's pretty cute for a guy his age."

"You really shouldn't have said that."

I bit her neck, and began sucking hard. She yelped. "Are you giving me a hickey?" she asked.

I paused to say, "yes," then sucked her neck again. She play-shrieked and wriggled away, and then stood up on the bed to look at her neck in a mirror across the room. "Oh my god," she moaned, dropping back down on the bed. "That had better be gone by the Winter Formal."

"You can wear your turtleneck dress," I consoled her.

"You remember that dress?" she asked.

"Hell yes," I said. She smiled and straddled me.

"Want to check out my underwear?" she asked. I lifted her skirt and peeked. She wasn't wearing any. Oh my god. I peeked again. Trim little triangle of dark hair.

"Hold on," I said, making her stand on her knees so I could undo my pants and pull them down to my thighs. I sat her back down on my cock. I rocked my hips and she rocked hers to meet mine. Just one thin layer of cotton between us, and it was getting all damp. Ungh.

"Wait," I said, thinking I wanted to make sure she came first this time. I propped myself up on one elbow and patted the bed next to me. She looked at me questioningly but lay down. I slipped my hand up her skirt and between her legs, wetting my fingers. She squeezed my hand briefly with her thighs and closed her eyes. With my middle finger, I found the right spot and pressed it, rhythmically, just like she had shown me. She moaned appreciatively and opened her legs a little wider. I took that as an invitation and I slipped my fingers down, letting one slide inside, and then another, stroking her and making her roll her hips. She felt so, so good to me there; feeling the warmth and tightness of her and watching her hips move that way were making my dick swell. I was curious how far inside my fingers could go without hurting her, but I didn't want to push too deep and accidentally hurt her, so I went back to working her clit. She slipped a hand inside my boxer briefs and wrapped her fingers around John Thomas, grasping and squeezing me as she rocked her hips harder, and then moaning, and then stiffening her limbs and crying out. After a minute she opened her eyes and gave me a dazzling smile, and then looked down and whispered, "Show me," so I made her come on the other side of me and pulled my boxers down to my knees.

"Oh my, it's big," she said. I guess she hadn't gotten a good look at it in the theater.

"That's what she said."

She rolled her eyes at my nonsensical joke, and then I put my hand over hers and showed her how to stroke me. She was a little gingerly. "You can squeeze harder, " I whispered. "And let your hand come all the way over the top." I was leaking enough that her hand got wet and slippery, and it felt so good I pulled my sweater up and out of the way. It wasn't too many strokes before I was spurting on my own belly, grunting with the pleasure of it. She giggled. "I like that."

"What a coincidence, I like that too," I answered. "Have you got a towel?" She disappeared and returned with a washcloth, and I wiped myself up and pulled my pants back on.

"I'm hungry," she said. "Wanna go get some lunch?"


	28. Chapter 28

**Chapter 28, **_**in which Bella gets inducted into the cult**_

I stood in front of the mirror in my bedroom, tying my narrow-black-and-white-striped tie and tucking it into a fitted pale sage-green cashmere v-neck sweater vest. Alice had brought this vest back for me from a trip to New York last spring—along with a pink one—which I told her I could never, ever wear in Forks—but I'd never really gotten around to wearing either one. She talked me into wearing the green one tonight when she said that if I wore it with a blazer then I could wear jeans. As long as they were dark vintage-wash. I ran my hands through my hair, which as usual was going every direction at once, and quickly gave up on trying to subdue the mop.

I heard Bella's voice in the hallway. She had told her dad that she and Alice were going stag to the dance, or whatever the female equivalent of stag is, and also in a group with Alice's siblings. Charlie had said it was fine for her to stay over.

"He's in his room primping," said Alice.

Bella poked her head in my door. I smiled at her in the mirror, then crossed the room to take her hand and kiss her. "You look very pretty," I told her. She was wearing a gray silk knee-length dress with a wide crossover v-neck, empire waist, and flutter sleeves. Her hair was in a twist at the nape of her neck. She looked good enough to eat. I pulled her in and shut the door over.

"Thank you," she said. She gazed at me. "You too." She kept looking at me. "Your eyes look so…green."

She glanced around. "So this is your room." She walked around, looking at everything. I watched her, feeling oddly nervous. She stopped at the stereo and pushed 'play' on the iPod.

"What are you listening to?" she asked. The Shins, _Wincing the Night Away._

"When it first came out I thought it was a dud but now I can't stop playing it."

"A dud? James Mercer can do no wrong. I want to marry him."

"You can't marry him…" I managed to stop myself before I finished the thought out loud: _"…because you're going to marry me."_

I winced. What was I _saying_?

She glanced at me and waited, then went on when I said nothing else.

"I saw them in Los Angeles when this album came out."

"Really?"

"Yeah, they played a surprise set at a record store. It was very cool."

"What were you doing in LA?"

"My mom was auditioning for a role on a soap opera."

"Thank god she didn't get it," she added.

She ran her finger along the shelf of CDs. I had them all burned as MP3s but sometimes I liked to look at the album liner notes so I kept all the jewel cases as well.

I loosened my tie knot and unbuttoned my collar underneath, then shrugged on my tweedy blazer.

"How's this?" I asked Bella.

"Very Vampire Weekend," she commented, nodding. I saw that look of satisfaction she always had in her eyes when they were resting on me, which I loved.

"OK, Walcott. Let's get out of Cape Cod." We headed for the door. Reaching my hand over her head, I opened it for her.

Twenty-five minutes later, the six of us walked into the Forks High gym to be greeted by pulsing beats and a strobe light.

"Wow, I didn't think they could use a strobe light at a public institution these days," I remarked. Then crooned, "Think about the epileptic dogs…"

Bella cracked a smile. "I love that show."

"Somewhere there's a golden retriever…who's havin' a seizure," she sang.

We all sat down on the bleachers to check out the scene. Emmett took a flask out of his pocket and discreetly passed it around, then went to get us some Cokes.

"Who's on first?" asked Alice.

"I'm driving," said Rosalie.

It was a tight squeeze with six of us in the c30, but we'd managed it with Emmett driving and Bella on my lap in the front passenger seat. I tried to figure out the logistics of the drive home with Rosalie at the wheel, but gave up. Maybe we'd have to cram Emmett in the backseat.

After a few minutes, Alice and Bella got up and went off together to the bathroom in that way girls have. It's like an unwritten rule: "Never pee alone."

Emmett came back with the drinks and sat down next to me, hitting me on the arm with a playful punch that nearly knocked me off the bench.

"So the Bolter is sleeping over tonight, eh?"

Since that fateful moment when they all stumbled upon us in the hot tub, Alice had coined the nickname for Bella, after a character in a Nancy Mitford novel. My siblings were all calling her "the Bolter" now, but not to her face.

"Anything you need? I got a drawerful of condoms back home."

"Thanks, Emmett, it's not like that," I said. Well, not yet. I noticed Jasper looking at me. He winked.

"Gotcha," said Emmett. "Well, I hope you know what you're doing with that girl. Need any tips?"

Alice and Bella were walking back up to us.

"Thanks, I'm fine, Em."

"Are you sure you know your way around? Any questions you want to ask me?"

I closed my eyes. "I'm good, thanks Em. Now shut up."

"What," asked Bella.

Emmett answered, "Nothing, Bella, I'm just talking to Ward here."

"Don't call me Ward." Ward was the worst.

Emmett stood up and offered his hand to Bella.

"Come on, little sister, let's dance." I wondered if that was a coincidence or if she had actually asked my brothers to dance with her as part of her "I'm not dating Edward Cullen" cover story. I felt like I was in the loony bin.

As soon as Emmett and Bella left, Alice started in. "I was asking Bella about you in the bathroom."

I eyed her warily.

"Don't worry. She's a close-mouthed little thing. But I can tell, she's really into you. Like, really into you. That girl is _sprung._"

She carried on. "She fits in our little group so well. Way better than that other little group. It's like she's one of us."

She sighed. "I love that my little brother and my best friend are madly in _luv._"

"_Little _brother?" I snorted. I was born seven minutes after Alice, as she liked to remind me as often as possible.

"Only in the sense of age and mental capacity," she returned.

"But not in height," I said, raising one finger.

To my surprise, Rosalie chimed in. "At first I was afraid she was going to be too sweet. But she has a nice edge to her."

Even Jasper jumped in. "She handles teasing remarkably well for an only child. And she dishes back. She's quick."

Alice said, "Only problem is, we all like her so much you can never break up with her."

"That's fine, I have no plans to break up with her."

Now Rosalie. "You seem really happy." She ruffled my hair in a rare gesture of tenderness.

I tried but I couldn't wipe the shit-eating grin off my face.

Rosalie gestured to the dance floor. "Oh, this is nice."

Emmett was dirty dancing behind Bella, gyrating his hips extremely close to her ass and grinning at us. Bella was cracking up. Rosalie rolled her eyes.

I stood up. "'Scuse me, I gotta go break this up." I walked up to them.

"Down, boy," I said to Emmett. "I'm cutting in." Emmett boogied away in Rosalie's direction.

"Hee hee, he said that would get you over here," Bella told me. She was dancing in her same typical style, the one I had been admiring that night more than three months ago.

"I like how you dance," I told her. "You kind of keep your feet in one spot and wiggle around. It looks good."

"Oh, that?" she said. She started laughing. "That way I can't trip over my own feet," she explained.

"It looks good, though. I love how you dance."

"Thanks."

The next song was a slow one, so I got to pull her close. I put both arms around her and she lay her head against my chest. As we swayed I gently touched her back, feeling her warmth through the thin, slippery silk. This was good. I looked down at the faint mark at the crook of her neck where it met her shoulder. She must have covered it with makeup, because you could barely see it (especially in this light), but my hickey was just barely visible, if you knew where to look for it, which I did. She had been wearing scarves and turtlenecks for the last week and a half.

As I held her, I turned over in my mind the idea, which had been growing steadily more urgent over the past week, that I needed to tell her I loved her. The feeling itself had been becoming steadily more clear until it just started to seem like a fact I was keeping from her. After the sort of pep talk, or whatever, my siblings had just given me, I felt even more convinced that she belonged with me, somehow. Or to me. I also wanted to tell her before we were separated for two weeks over Christmas. And, I wanted to tell her before we went any further physically, since that was still racing full speed ahead, damn the torpedoes. So, I concluded, I really ought to say it to her tonight. But not here, in the Forks High gym.

I leaned down and whispered in her ear. "Now that you know where my room is, will you come visit me there tonight?"

She looked up at me through her lashes and nodded. She seemed shy again. It was probably just the angle.

The music changed. I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was Jasper.

"Bella promised me the next dance," he explained. I sighed and handed her over. When I sat back down on the bleachers and looked back at them, she had one hand on his shoulder and he had one on her waist and held her other hand as if they were doing a foxtrot, but he teaching was her some crazy rockabilly step and he had her kicking up her feet.

I leaned back and watched them. Mike and Jessica walked by and stopped to talk to me.

"I'm sorry to hear about that terrible thing," Jessica said consolingly.

I looked up at her inquiringly.

Mike started explaining. "Hey, man, I hope you don't mind that I told her about it. It was just such a crazy story…Bella told me after I saw you guys in Port Angeles, when she was taking you out to dinner to cheer you up."

"Oh, no," I said drily. "By all means."

Lauren saw us talking and she came over.

"Hey, dude."

"Hey, Lauren."

"Nice vest. I heard about that thing…that must be so terrible."

"Yes," said Jessica solemnly. "Anyway, I'm really sorry. Things must be so hard for you right now." I kind of wondered what Bella had said, but then part of me really didn't _want _to know. I was sure it was terrible.

"Yes, well, I am bearing up as best I can." Jessica squeezed my shoulder and they walked away.

Alice was right. Bella did fit perfectly into our little group.

_**Author's Note: I have **_**got**_** to stop staying up all night writing this. But it's like a drug to me.**_

_**That FOTC tidbit was just a little shout-out to all you Kiwis reading this. All 7 of you. (I'm sorry to have to tell you there are a **_**lot**_** more Aussies following along…). I love studying the fanfic "traffic" report showing where readers are located. Hello, United Arab Emirates!**_


	29. Chapter 29

**Chapter 29, **_**in which Edward 'n' Bella get hot 'n' heavy**_

After she had danced with both of my brothers, and then with my sister Alice for good measure, Bella pulled me out on the floor again. The music was slowing down. We swayed for a while, and then Alice appeared at my side, beaming.

"Hey! We're invited to Ryan Morris's after-party!" Ryan Morris was one of Emmett's teammates. I stuck my finger in Alice's face, but before I could start spouting objections, she said, "Kidding! We're going to drop you guys at home. 'Kay?"

On the way to the car, Emmett called shotgun, declined my proposal of a best-two-out-of-three ro-sham-bo for front-seat rights, and counteroffered to have Bella sit on his lap; after that freak dancing display, I was obliged to veto that. Bella and I ended up in the back seat, Bella in the middle, with Alice sitting on Jasper's lap and her feet on my lap. Bella kept tickling the backs of her knees and Alice kept kicking me with her heels.

"Rosalie, could you just drop us here?" I said, as we reached the mouth of our driveway. I wanted to avoid the telltale crunch of car wheels on a gravel road.

Bella and I walked up the drive to the front door. As I slipped my key in the lock, I whispered, "OK, wait a sec."

I opened the front door as silently as possible and stuck in my head. Except for a light left on in the front hall, the house was dark and quiet, with no sign of movement.

"OK, come on," I hissed. Bella followed me inside.

"Take off your shoes," I instructed. There were a number of shoes in and around a low shoe cubby near the door, and we added ours to the heap. I took Bella's hand and led her upstairs and down the hall to my room. Happily, my room was on the opposite side of the house from my parents'. After Bella came in I shut the door and locked it. Then I leaned down and kissed her gently on the mouth, my hands on her shoulders. She went up on tippy toe, winding her arms around my neck and pressing herself against me. I slid my hands down and wrapped my arms around her waist, picking her up and shuffling us over to the foot of my bed. I sat down on the bed, corralling her between my knees. _No pussyfooting around this time, Cullen, _I told myself.

"Isabella," I began, taking her hand and kissing her palm and then her wrist. "Bella, I wanted to say…" I looked up at her. She gazed back at me.

"Bella, I'm in love with you," I told her. Her breathing, already quickened, sped up. I wrapped my arms around her waist and pressed my face against her silk-covered belly. Her hands were in my hair.

"I'm in love with you, Edward," she whispered. My heart felt like it would burst; I had hoped that she might say that back, but I had told myself not to expect an answer. I just needed her to know how I felt. I leaned my head back and she stooped down to kiss me, so very sweetly. I let my hands trail down her bottom and down her legs, to her calves, feeling the silkiness of both her dress and her stockings—the feeling of her body sheathed in silk was sending me into sensory overload—and then back up her legs, under her skirt. Halfway up her thighs I suddenly felt roughness under my fingertips, and after a moment of confusion, realized it was lace. I slid my fingers farther up and felt the smooth flesh of her thighs. It clicked in my brain.

"Are these the Halloween stockings?" I asked. Her eyes snapped open.

"How did you know?"

I smiled, slowly. "Simple observation, my dear Watson."

I brought my hands out from under her skirt and slid them up her hips. This I needed to see.

"How do you get this dress off?" I asked. She reached to one side and pulled down a zipper. I pushed the dress off her shoulders and it fell to the floor. She was wearing a little, satiny black bra that seemed to come only halfway up her breasts and offer them like fruit on a platter, a pair of little black panties, and a garter belt, attached to stockings that came halfway up her thighs. I rubbed my hand over my face. "Oh dear god," I moaned. All that black satin and lace against her creamy skin made me want to push her onto the bed and do things to her that we hadn't quite graduated into doing. I put my hands on her hips and pulled her towards me, kissing her belly button. I worked my way up to kiss between her breasts, and since I couldn't quite reach the tops of them I kissed the silk-encased bottom sides.

I leaned back to look at her again. "Turn around," I requested. "You're beautiful."

She let her forearms rest on top of her head and slowly turned herself around, giving me a good look. When she came around to face me again, I said quietly,

"I really like this getup, but I need to take it off you now."

She giggled. "Do you think you can figure it out?" she asked in a challenging tone.

"Oh, I think I can handle it," I answered. First the bra. I went around back and was right this time: I unclasped it and freed her tits, each of which I gently kissed. I tossed the bra on the floor. Next the bottoms. I noticed that she had put her panties on _over_ the garter belt; that was interesting. I would have thought it was the other way round. However, after I grasped both sides of the panties and lowered them down enough for her to step out of them, I understood: now she was wearing the stockings and garters, but, ahem, access was unfettered. For a moment I thought I would just leave them on, but no, I wanted her totally naked. So I felt around on the back of the belt and found a hook-and-eye clasp. After I undid that, she helped me push the stockings down and stepped out of them. "Bravo, Cullen," she smiled.

She sat down next to me on the bed, and I leaned over to kiss her, fondling her breasts at the same time. She hummed and arched her back in response._ Must get these clothes off. _I stood up and stripped, as she pulled down her bun and let her hair free, and then leaned back on both hands to watch me. After stepping on my jeans to extract myself, I pulled off one sock, nearly losing my balance and hopping on one foot—here Bella started giggling and I had to shush her, sternly. I put one knee on the bed next to her, and she started scooting herself back on the bed and then leaning backward so that we fluidly ended up lying with me on top of her. Now _this _was heavenly and electric at the same time, feeling all of her naked skin along the entire length of me, feeling her hair down there against my cock, her tits against my chest. We kissed and kissed, rolling around, trying out different angles. I told her a couple more times that I loved her, that I was in love with her. She told me back. I had a thought, which was to push down my cock and place it between her legs, where she squeezed it with her thighs. However, after I started rubbing against her and feeling her wetness on me, I soon decided that was way too exciting and I pulled it away.

The soft, smooth feeing of her skin all against mine, her slender fingertips touching my face, my chest, my back, oh, my belly, ungh, my thighs, everywhere, it was all working me up into an aching frenzy. How I wanted her, how I wanted everything from her, how I wanted to make her _mine_. I wanted to explore every curve and crease and fold of her. With fingertips and lips I found secret spots—the inside of her elbow, where my kiss made her sigh; that spot under her ear, where my tongue made her moan; the crook where the top of her thigh met her hip, where my caress made her tremble. My cock was rampant and demanding relief but this was too good to rush through.

I had another idea in my head, which was that I found the scent of her _down there _on my fingertips so exciting that I wanted to taste her. So I whispered, "There's something I wanted to try."

I scooched down so that I was lying between her legs with my head even with her hips, propping myself up on my elbows. First I kissed her, and then stroked her with my nose, inhaling that girl smell of her, and then I explored her folds with my tongue. She tasted deliciously musky and surprisingly sweet. She was making some very encouraging moaning sounds, but I got a hair in my mouth, so I used my thumbs to gently spread her open more, and she also bent her knees and opened her thighs wider. I was sort of freelancing here, not quite sure what I was supposed to do, but I figured I could just use my tongue to do what my fingers had done before. I flicked at her with the tip of my tongue, and then I lapped at her, which made her sigh and roll her hips. OK, she liked that, so I kept going, using the motions of her hips to set a rhythm, which was sort of slow and hard. Gradually our pace quickened, and she started making some noises that were rather more higher-pitched than I had heard her make before, and just as I started to worry that my parents would hear her she picked up one of my pillows and put it over her head, and then abandoned herself, undulating her hips and making a muffled keening sound into the pillow before dissolving in shudders. Her pleasure made me feel high. I kept licking her until she giggled and put her hand on my head to stop me.

"Tickles," she explained. I slid back up the bed and stretched myself out next to her, grinning.

"That was…_very_ nice," she whispered.

"I aim to please." I smirked.

"You please me." She kissed my mouth, which seemed a little naughty since I still had her taste on my lips, and wrapped her fingers around my cock. "That's your cue to say _please please me_," she said, pushing me onto my back and positioning herself on all fours over me.

Her long hair touched me first, tickling the tops of my thighs, and next came her lips, planting a kiss on my tip, which made my suffering cock jump with delight. She glanced up at me through her lashes, and then ran her tongue all around the tip. I pushed my hips up, wanting more, and then she slipped her mouth over the entire head and gave a little suck, which gave me a fluttery feeling in the pit of my belly. I sucked in a quick breath: I was not going to withstand this onslaught for long. She sucked harder, stroking me with her tongue, and then started to work her way down, as if she was curious to see how much of my cock she could fit into her mouth. With both hands she caught her hair and swept it over her shoulders, giving me a clear view. Lacing my fingers behind my head, I propped up my head to watch. Her lips moved up and down my dick as she suckled and licked, her eyelids fluttering, breasts dangling, her uplifted backside waggling. Her mouth was warm and wet; her _teeth _grazed me, which was surprisingly thrilling. She was holding her hair back with one hand and now, with the other hand, she started exploring and caressing me lower down, between my legs. I groaned and could not help rocking my hips as if I were making love to her mouth.

"Bella," I warned her. I was on the edge_._ She wrapped her hand around the base of my cock and squeezed, and I exploded in her mouth with a rush of pulsing pleasure that seemed to go on and on. I made some vowel sounds, a little louder than I intended. She kept sucking lightly until I stopped moving, and then sat up on her heels, swallowed with a funnily tentative look on her face, and then smiled at me.

"Salty," she commented.

I pulled her towards me, and she lay back down on top of me and began kissing my neck, and then as if distracted stopped kissing and started _smelling_ me.

"Are you sniffing me?"

She stuck her nose in my armpit.

"You smell really good," she explained. "You taste good, you smell good."

I sighed, feeling euphorically happy. I settled her next to me. Bella lay quietly in my arms, her silky hair spread over my chest, and we drifted off to sleep.


	30. Chapter 30

**Chapter 30, **_**in which Edward and Bella have a little quarrel**_

I awoke with a start, immediately checking my bedside clock: 5 am. I let myself relax and enjoy the sensual pleasure of Bella, naked, curled in my arms with her back towards me. My morning wood was pressed up delightfully against the crack of her ass. Now _this _was the way to wake up in the morning.

I kissed the top of her head and ran my fingertips down her arm. She stirred, and then lifted her head with a jerk.

"What time is it?" she mumbled. I told her.

"Oh," she said, stretching herself luxuriously, arms out in front of her. She must have noticed me pressing up against her then because next she pushed her bum against me. I pushed her back. She giggled. I shushed her.

I swept her hair off her neck and began kissing her. She sighed and tilted her head towards the pillow, offering her neck to me. I kissed a little ways down her spine, and then held her hip as I pushed my hard-on against her bottom again. She returned the push. I slipped my hand around and drew it down her belly and down her thigh, and then slowly traced my fingertips up the inside of her thigh. I thought about that night in the hot tub, and afterwards, and about how much further we had come, yet how much further we had yet to go. I was still waiting on some sort of clear green light from Bella—Jasper and I had had another tête-à-tête after he had passed on to me (in strictest confidence) a tidbit he had gleaned from Alice, that Bella had made a remark to her about me along the same line as "you're too handsome for me" that seemed to indicate wariness. So i had renewed my intention of not _pushing_ Bella, which was getting more and more difficult, especially now that I had her naked in my bed.

"I'm crazy about you," I whispered. She sighed again. I cupped her sex with my hand, and then pressed with my middle finger. She moaned and moved her bottom against my cock in a slow circle, which served to nestle me further into the crack of her ass. This made me think about I about how I had pushed my cock in between her legs last night, and I wanted to feel that again. Last night it had seemed risky, but now from this direction the head was closer to her clit than her entrance. Even if I let myself go, would it really be so bad? She squeezed briefly with her thighs, and then began to move her hips back and forth, then shifted her hips to bring her clit right up against the head of my cock. With her fingertips, she pressed my cock into her clit, which made her hum.

I began to thrust my hips slowly and gently, rubbing my length against her, while she pressed the tip rhythmically against herself. It was exquisitely pleasurable and seemed more civilized, somehow, than the fully or partially clothed dry humping we'd been doing lately. She must have been getting pretty wet because pretty soon _I_ was getting wet from her, plus I was leaking, which made everything slippery. I felt catapulted directly back into the frenzied state of arousal I had been in the night before. It felt so outrageously good it was going to be difficult to stop unless she made me stop. I wondered briefly if I could control myself long enough to go down the hall and rifle through Emmett's drawers for his possibly mythological stash of rubbers. It would be so easy to slide inside her, and oh, I wanted to be inside her, to possess her, to _devour _her…I bit her neck, which made her swat at my forehead—"Sorry," I whispered, grinning at the thought of giving her _another_ hickey, and I moved my mouth down and sucked on her shoulder to do just that. I liked to see my mark on her. She didn't swat me off again. I felt like I was about to come so I told her that in her ear. She didn't move her hand, but kept working the tip of my cock with her fingers, pressing it into her, and after a moment I was saying, "God damn" as I came hard, my cum streaming onto her fingertips and clit. She immediately gave a deep groan and rolled her hips as she came against the head of my cock. I lay there, panting, heart pounding, thinking that probably wasn't the smartest thing we'd ever done but it felt fucking marvelous.

I pulled open my bedside table drawer and handed her a washcloth. I had started keeping them there earlier that fall for obvious reasons. She wiped herself carefully and handed me the towel, which I aimed into the hamper. She turned herself over and kissed me lightly on the lips.

"I need to brush my teeth," she suggested.

I indicated the door to the bathroom. "Use my toothbrush. It's the green one."

She sat up, looked around on the floor and found my button-down shirt from the night before, and modestly put it on. I watched her walk across the room, loving the sight of her naked in my shirt.

I added, "And lock the other door in there—I share the bathroom with Jasper."

She disappeared into the bathroom, and then when she came back I got up and brushed my teeth. I slipped back under the covers with her and we kissed for a while.

"What time is it?" she asked. A little after six. "I should go to Alice's room."

I nodded. Sometimes my parents were up early, though usually not on Sunday. She got up and started gathering up her clothing, which was strewn on the floor. As she bent over to pick up her stocking I said, suggestively, "I see London."

She stood up quickly, pulling down on the hem. "Can I borrow this?" she tugged on the front of the shirt.

"Sure."

She came over to the bed and kissed me again; I tried to pull her back down but she wriggled free. She fumbled with the door lock, blew me a kiss, slowly poked her head out to make sure the coast was clear, and vanished. I rolled back over and thought about the night before as I drifted back to sleep, hoping I would dream about her.

# # #

Eventually we were all up and downstairs. Bella was dressed, in clothes from the bag she had brought with her the evening before and left in Alice's room. I made waffles, as per usual, and Esmé put out yogurt and blueberries to go with them. At breakfast, most of my siblings seemed a little bleary-eyed, all except Rosalie, who was eating just a bowl of yogurt because she was about to go for a run. The conversation was sort of befuddled and meandering.

"I've got this Beatles song stuck in my head," I commented, randomly. "'Please Please Me.'"

Bella, sitting on the opposite side of the table, went red.

I could tell I was going to get some mileage out of this.

After breakfast, Bella was going home the way she had arrived at our house the day before: On the back of Alice's scooter. I stood in the doorway, watching them head down the front stairs.

"Oh, Bella," I called after her. I crooked my finger. She came back up the stairs.

"What is this thing you've told Mike, who's told Jessica, who's told Lauren?"

"Thing? What thing?"

"You know, the really terrible thing."

"Oh, that thing."

I waited.

"Hm, I'm not sure you want to know."

I waited.

She sighed. "OK, it was about how, after a long period of questioning and soul-searching, you had finally found love, and you thought the guy loved you back…"

Here I interrupted her. "The guy?"

"Yes, well, I wanted to give the story that element of truth so I based the guy, in my mind of course, on James."

I pinched the bridge of my nose.

"So he broke up with you and broke your heart…and the really crazy part was then immediately afterward, he started going out with a _girl_ and he went all psycho on you and accused you of turning him straight. It was really terrible. A terrible blow to your self-esteem. You _turned_ someone _straight_."

"OK…so you told them I was gay. Goddammit, Bella!" I hissed at her.

"What?" she hissed back. "Don't be such a homophobe."

"I'm not a homophobe. I love the gays. But I don't want people going around saying I am one."

"Why not? What's wrong with being gay?"

"Nothing, but…"

"Well, then, honestly I don't see the problem." She dropped her voice further. "Edward, you are an attractive, sexy man. You know what turns you on. What do you care what these people think? You're not going to see most of them all ever again after we graduate."

"That is not cool, Bella. This is not San Francisco. I have a whole nother year and a half of high school. In Forks. Population 3120. I love how tricky you are, but you need to run this sort of shit by me."

She looked chastened. She said, quietly, "I'm sorry, Edward, you're right. Do you want me to go tell them I was shitting them? 'Cause I will."

I rubbed my face. "Let me think about it." She looked at me for another minute, abashed, and then headed down the steps.

She called a half-hour later to sheepishly reiterate her offer to retract the story. I asked her whether she did not think it was time to give up this ridiculous charade, but she still seemed to think it essential that her father know nothing about us so that she could carry on seeing me as easily and often as she did. She expected to be locked in her room for the remainder of the school year if Mr. Law-and-Order knew she was so much as _dating _a boy. I didn't know him at all, so it was difficult for me to say. But she didn't really know him either. After I hung up with her, I was thinking how unfair the world was, that despite the loss I had had, I had in effect been given two sets of real parents, while she had been given roughly half a parent of either sex.

I thought about it all afternoon. Once I got over the initial shock of Bella's telling everyone I was gay, I had to hand it to her. First of all, it was totally believable. Even my own mother thought I was gay. Secondly, what other story could make Mike refute the evidence of his own eyes?

Finally I decided that probably the best way to deal with it would be to PDA Bella at school until everyone decided that, in fact, Edward Cullen was _not_ gay.


	31. Chapter 31

**Chapter 31, **_**in which Edward and Jacob have an unpleasant interaction**_

It was the league meet in Port Townsend, the last track meet of the semester, on the Saturday after school ended for winter break. I was warming up for my final event, the 100-meter dash, when out in the sidelines my eye was caught by…Jacob Black. For a split second I scanned for Bella, before my conscious brain kicked in and I remembered that she was on a plane to San Francisco right now. Jacob was looking right at me; obviously he had been aware of my presence longer than I had been aware of his. I held his gaze for a moment, then nodded my head, aiming to make the interaction seem less fraught. He didn't nod back but he looked away.

When the meet was over, I was kneeling on the grass changing my shoes when I heard someone behind me repeating my name. I looked around. Jacob was walking towards me.

"Cullen. _That's_ your name? Cullen?"

Well, there it was right on my singlet. I stood up. Jacob walked up, coming to stand a couple inches too close.

I didn't like his tone and felt disinclined to answer any question he put to me using it, but I didn't want to get into something with him, either. I looked at him levelly.

"Look, Jacob. I don't want to quarrel with you. I'm sorry you're upset that I'm with Bella."

He looked staggered for a moment, but recovered quickly.

"You're Dr. Cullen's son, aren't you."

I didn't like where this was going.

"And you were nosing around the dig with Bella when my boys stopped you. That was _you._"

Since I was the one Bella had chosen, I could afford to be magnanimous. On some level I felt bad for Jacob. Clearly he had feelings for Bella and had been trying or wishing to move their long-standing relationship beyond friendship. If he felt one tenth of the desire for and protectiveness over her that I did, seeing us together at the theater like that must have been killing. I remembered the way I had felt when I saw him simply drop her off for school, and that after I had known her all of a week. And, especially based on the nature of the act he had seen—even though it was initiated by Bella and even though, in a strange way that became clear to me only as it was happening, it gave her a measure of power over me even though she had been kneeling at my feet—still, seeing that from the outside probably made him think I was some jerk exploiting her. And even though the way he had grabbed her arm had upset me, still was upsetting me, I thought that, in part at least—beyond the sheer jealousy—Jacob's interference was meant to protect Bella from being used.

"Jacob, I am sorry this has all come out the way it has, but you don't have to worry about Bella getting hurt. I care for her. Very much."

"You think that makes me feel better?" he sneered. "You don't even know her."

"I do know her."

"Not like I do." Clearly he thought he was Heathcliff to Bella's Catherine to my Edgar Linton. Not that he would ever put it in those terms.

"Cullen. You are going to be so fucked, Edward Cullen."


	32. Chapter 32

**Chapter 32**, _**in which the shit starts hitting the fan**_

The 30th of December. Friday. I wondered if physically crossing the days off my calendar would cheer me up. I had sort of slogged through the whirlwind of eggnog-soaked holiday parties, last-minute shopping, gingerbread, pomander balls, and boughs of holly this year—Esmé was _big_ on Christmas—mooning over how much I would enjoy it all if only Bella was here with me. We were texting each other a lot during the day and calling each other at night, more than usual because we were used to seeing one another every day. She seemed pleased to be with her mom and to be back in San Francisco, which also made me agonize a little that she might be wishing she were back there instead of in Forks.

For Christmas I had given her an iPod Shuffle loaded with songs, and she had given me a hardcover copy of _Pale Fire, _since I had forgotten the book at her house that day but still wanted to read it. I had started to read it over break, but every time I started to feel either amused or confused or blown away by something in it, my mind would start wandering to her and I decided it would be better, basically, to read it when she was back.

And now it was almost New Year's, only a few more days left until school started again, but all I could see was the giant hump of another celebration to get through. I had been cleaning my room, and as I shuffled down the hall carrying my laundry hamper—I was especially diligent about doing my laundry these days, for obvious reasons, not wanting to leave it piling up for so long that Esmé might decide to do a load for me—as I bumped down the hall past Carlisle's study, I heard his voice from within, sounding strident, and then a sharp thump as if he had thrown the phone at the door. That was weird. I set down the basket, rapped on his door, and poked my head in. "Everything all right?" I asked.

He was sitting at his desk with his head in his hands. "Oh, Edward, sorry." He straightened up. He glanced hesitantly at me, then sighed.

"We're having some problems with the Quileute tribe not wanting to renew the easement for the dig."

I froze. _Shit. _Could this have anything to do with…_shit._ Was that possible?

"Why?" I managed to ask, picking up the phone and handing it to him.

He sighed again. "Their reasons are a little unclear, but we have a meeting scheduled in three weeks' time. We'll get more information then."

Carlisle seemed stressed out.

"We've been really making good headway, but we still have a lot of work to do. And now we're on hold. I'm on hold, I'll be twiddling my thumbs for the next three weeks. Even the clinic will be closed." He meant the clinic on the reservation. Carlisle loved to work, and taking a break always went against the grain.

He continued. "And then there's the bigger picture…if this dig cannot continue, there is no longer any reason for us to remain in Forks." Meaning our family. I felt a sick feeling in the pit of my belly.

Moving to Forks had been a difficult family decision. At first he had commuted to the dig when we lived in Seattle because he only needed to be there occasionally, but as his presence at the site had become increasingly vital, the ridiculousness of that commute from Seattle began to take its toll.

"We _are_ making a lot of sacrifices to be here, with you kids' education for example…"

I quickly said, "Well, it won't make much difference if we move next year in terms of college apps, so..."

"Well, if this dig ends now, I don't know why we'd stay another semester."

I felt like my head was going to explode. I must have looked upset, because Carlisle appeared to remember himself and said,

"Edward, don't worry about this business. I don't mean to burden you. These are all big family decisions we'll make together. I know moving has been hard on you kids, first to Seattle, then here. Look, for now I will just focus on working this issue out with the tribe. It's probably just a hiccup."

I stood awkwardly in front of his desk for another minute, then nodded.

"OK. Sorry, Dad." I didn't know what else to say. I sincerely hoped this all had nothing to do with me. I wondered if I should tell him. I had to think.

He nodded and I left the room. I took my laundry downstairs, started a load, and then went into the rumpus room, adjacent to the laundry room, and flung myself down on the coach. Jasper and Emmett looked up from a game of backgammon.

"What's up, Edward?" Jasper asked me. I wasn't sure I was supposed to tell them anything, so I mumbled, "Nothing."

"Aw, Eduardo is missing his honey. Don't worry, Señor, she'll be back in a few days and then maybe you can finally get around to banging her," Emmett snickered.

"Shut the hell up, Emmett."

"I'm sorry. What I meant to say was, she'll be back in a few days and then you can sit around and talk about your feelings."

"Please, Emmett, I am _not _in the mood."

Rosalie glanced over at me from the other couch, where she was playing Frogger with Alice.

"_You're_ especially whiny today, darling. Have you been up in your room playing Smiths albums all morning again?"

I got up and left the room, thinking I would call Bella. I didn't want to tell her about that bombshell Carlisle had dropped, not yet anyway, I just wanted to hear her voice. But before I even reached my room, my phone rang. It was Bella.

"Hey, I have some bad news." Oh my god. What now.

Turned out Bella's mom was going to rendezvous with her boyfriend and the circus in Perth next, but did not leave San Francisco for a few more days and she really wanted Bella to stay a little bit into next week, even if she missed a couple days of school. I moaned.

"I can barely wait to see you as it is…" I objected.

"I know…here's the deal, though. She really wants to meet you. Can you think of a good excuse to come down here?"

I told her I would work on it. We had a brief conversation, then hung up. I laid on my bed, thinking it over, until I hit on it. I jumped up and went to my desk, opening the e-mail in my latop. I had been contacted by the track and field coach at Stanford, but at the time was focused on East Coast schools. But what _about_ Stanford. Ever since Chelsea Clinton had gone there, it was on the radar as the Ivy of the West. Seems like I should give it a look at the very least, right? I phoned the number given in the e-mail and, luckily, was able to reach an assistant coach in the office during this dead week. I apologized for my late response and told him I was interested in making a trip down to Stanford for a tour. He said he would arrange something for first thing next week. Perfect.

I went back to Carlisle's study and knocked on the door. "Come in," he called, then went back to his phone call, holding one finger up while he finished it. When he got off the phone, I told him about my newly conceived interest in touring Stanford. Should probably do it right away if I was going to consider applying. I even had a place to stay: Alice had checked with Bella, and Bella's mom was fine with my crashing with them in San Francisco. Her mom even, uh, suggested I come down there for New Year's because she was having a dinner party and some friends who were alums were coming, I could talk to them…._hm, maybe I shouldn't have invented that last bit, in case Esmé wants to talk to Bella's mom, but oh well._

It was helpful that Carlisle was so distracted by his crisis. He seemed a little surprised by this sudden development but had no objection to my wanting to visit Stanford. He had thought I was being a little rigid and shortsighted about restricting my interest to the East. And Carlisle and Esmé were not sticklers for perfect attendance—in fact, they were often taking us kids out of school for camping and other wholesome family activities during warmer weather—as long as we kept our grades up. My grades were excellent.

"OK, sure. Can you make the arrangements? You can use some of our Southwest miles." He wanted to get back to his phone calls.

I sprinted downstairs to fill Alice in on the imaginary phone call she had made to Bella on my behalf, then back upstairs to call Bella back. She told me to have Esmé e-mail her mom if she wanted to check in. Tomorrow morning I would be on a plane to S.F.


	33. Chapter 33

**Chapter 33, **_**in which Edward and Bella take a break from the shit hitting the fan to celebrate New Year's**_

"Nice to meet you, Ms. Higgenbotham."

She giggled, sounding more like Bella's sister than her mother.

"Gawd, _please _call me Renée. So nice to meet _you, _Edward," she said coming in for a hug. "I've heard _so_ much about you."

Over her head, I glanced inquisitively at Bella, who shook her head slightly and shrugged her shoulders.

"I'm being sarcastic," Renée added.

I liked her at once.

Sometimes you hear people say to study a girl's mother to see how she'll turn out…Renée just looked like a more mature version of Bella, except with shorter hair a few shades lighter, blue eyes, and laugh lines. She had the same slender litheness and appealing prettiness.

It was twoish. We had just met up with her mother at a noodle house in Japantown, after Bella had picked me up in the airport alone, driving an Austin Mini Cooper. Not one of the new ones, but an original that looked like it dated from the 1960s. I was afraid I wasn't actually going to fit in it, but it was somewhat roomier inside than it appeared.

"Aren't you afraid to drive this thing on the freeway?" I laughed. "Whose car is this?"

"It belongs to the people whose house we're staying in. It's the perfect car for this town because you can park it anywhere." Bella's mom owned a flat in a neighborhood called Duboce Triangle, which her parents had helped her buy when she and Bella's dad got divorced. But they were renting it out while she was traveling. Her mom was housesitting for friends who had a flat in the Cow Hollow neighborhood and were away for the holidays, and that's where they had spent Christmas, with some other relatives who had come to visit.

"Do they know you're driving it?"

"Hm, not sure. Better me than my mom, though."

As we drove through the city, I admired the way she navigated hairy traffic in this little manual car. I had driven her truck and I knew she could drive stick, but I had never been driven anywhere by her. In Seattle, driving on the freeway could be a little hectic but city streets were pretty mellow. In Forks, of course, there was just one main road. Driving in San Francisco seemed a little maniacal, but she seemed accustomed to it. "The problem with driving here is that it's full of immigrants and tourists, and half the streets are one-way, and then of course there are the hills." She cut off a driver who was trying to cut her off in order to get across three lanes of traffic and make a left turn the wrong way onto a one-way street. "Sorry, guy," she murmured.

I looked around. "Where _are_ those famous hills?"

"Not so much here. More that way," she said, waving her hand at the northeast. "But why don't we go drop your bag at home right now and I'll take you down a hill on the way." She wasn't kidding. She made a left, then a right, and I saw we had somehow come to the top of a hill that appeared to be a sixty-degree angle. She had to crane her head to be able to see the road as we started down it. After we dropped my bag off, we came back up the same hill, which was kind of tricky because there was a stop sign at the top and she had to use the parking brake to keep us from rolling backwards down the steep incline after making the stop. I found myself gripping the sides of my seat.

We had a nice lunch of udon with her mom, who asked me a lot of questions in a friendly way, filled me in on what she and Bella had been doing the last couple of weeks, and told some crazy stories about her travels in Asia. Her boyfriend had gotten her a job with Cirque de Soleil doing stagecraft: helping with the scenery rigging and assisting the costume designer. She was very chatty and easy to talk to.

Renée _was _in fact throwing a dinner party for New Year's Eve, but Bella asked me if I wouldn't rather go out for dinner with a bunch of her old friends from Lowell High instead.

"It's all about the meals, isn't it."

"That's how we entertain ourselves here."

I thought it sounded fun, so a few hours later, after helping her mom prep a bouillabaisse all except for simmering the seafood, we found ourselves hopping out of a cab and meeting up with a bunch of people at a Pakistani restaurant in the Mission district. We ate veggie pakoras and curry and kebabs and naan while Bella caught up on gossip and gave some funny impressions of life in Forks. It was a good time. Bella was wearing a dark blue mohair sweater I hadn't seen before, and I decided dark blue was my favorite color on her because it made such a pretty contrast with her cream-and-strawberries skin, but also brought out the warmth in her brown eyes, whereas black made them look darker. I was aware that I was eyeing her over dinner like a starving man eyeing a steak, but it had been two weeks since I had seen her, for god's sake.

Her friends were going on to a New Year's party after dinner, and invited us along, but by then we were dying to be alone and figured we'd have the best luck with that if we headed home.

The Mission was a lively, somewhat grungy neighborhood teeming with hipsters. We were keeping an eye out for a cab, and Bella had us walking in the general direction that we wanted to go. The streets were full of people, many of them spilling out of bars and nightclubs, some fairly drunk. As we walked up the street we passed a girl with long, wavy red hair who was sitting on the sidewalk, swearing like a sailor. We both glanced at her as we walked by, as I was in the midst of telling Bella a funny story about the time some friends of Emmett's had tried to teach Rosalie to waterski. We came to a red light and as we stood at the curb waiting we heard a girl yelling and ranting behind us. Bella looked back. "It's that red-haired girl," she said. She looked back again. "Um…I think she's yelling at _me."_

I turned around just as the girl came within a couple of feet of us. "You bitch! What are you looking at! Hey, I'm talking to you!" She was glaring at Bella, who gave me a half-amused, half-worried look.

"Hey, now," I said soothingly to the girl. "We're not looking at you. We're just walking down the street here. Happy New Year."

"I'm not talking to you. I'm talking to her. What are you looking at, bitch?" She took another step towards Bella and I put my hand on her shoulder. She suddenly grabbed my jacket collar and started yelling at me,

"What are you gonna do, mister big guy? Are you gonna hit me? What are you gonna do, big man?" This was not good. She wasn't even as tall as Bella, maybe five foot two, and she was sort of dangling off my collar and yelling things that were making everyone on the street start to look hard at us.

"Hey, there's a taxi!" Bella sprang into the intersection just as the light changed and ran up to the cab to claim it. She opened the back door. "Come on, Edward!"

I managed to free my collar from the grip of the redhead, who was hissing and spitting. Why was I always getting into these messes? Once Bella saw me sprinting towards the cab, she slid into the backseat and I slid in after her. Before I could pull the door shut, however, the girl slid into the backseat as well. The three of us stared at each other, and then Bella gave the driver our address. The girl countered with her address. The turbaned driver just sat there, glaring at us in the rearview mirror and saying in an exasperated tone, "Where you want to go first?" The girl shouted her address again. I turned to her.

"I tell you what. We'll give you this cab. You take it." Bella opened her door and climbed out, and I followed. I tried to close the door, but the girl pushed it open with her foot and jumped out as well, slamming the door behind her. Before we could do anything else, the empty cab sped away.

"Goddamn it!" I moaned. We tried walking up the street again, but Little Red was right behind us, shouting at Bella again. If it were a guy it would have been easier to deal with—as it was, it was hard for me to figure out what to do. Suddenly Bella spun around and confronted the girl.

"Get away from us," she growled. The girl shoved her, and Bella shoved her back, hard. The girl teetered as if she might fall. This was not good.

"Come on," I said, grabbing Bella's hand and ducking into the nearest bar. I asked the bouncer if he could give us a hand eluding a crazed harpy, pointing her out, and he chuckled. "Don't worry, I'll take care of it." He positioned himself outside the door and when the girl tried to follow us into the bar he turned her away. He had to pick her up physically three times, arms and legs flailing, and set her down on the sidewalk before she finally gave up and wandered away.

After a few minutes Bella and I thanked him and left the bar, continuing up towards Market Street and keeping an eye out for a cab. We saw a lot of occupied cabs, but no empty ones, and started to notice people on every corner who were also trying to hail one. Bella suggested we keep walking towards the Castro, as there were bound to be lots of cabs over there, she said. When we got over there, there were if anything more people spilling out of more bars and more nightclubs and standing on corners trying in vain to hail a cab.

"Can we just walk home?" I asked her.

"No, there's a kind of bad neighborhood between here and home. Not good to walk through this time of night."

"How about the bus?"

"If we could get on one, but there aren't that many running on the holiday schedule and I saw a couple that were all full of people and just skipping the stops."

We parked ourselves on a street corner with a small crowd of taxi seekers. All four corners seemed to be full of people waiting around. I managed to get a fire hydrant to sit on, and I leaned Bella up against me with her back against my chest. I looked at my watch.

"We may be spending midnight right here on this corner," I told her.

She leaned her head back and turned her face up to look at me.

"I don't mind. I'm just glad you're here." I leaned her back and kissed her, cradling her in my arms as if I were dipping her in a tango. People on our corner started getting chummy, and someone popped open a bottle of champagne and passed around little plastic champagne saucers. It was becoming a festive little scene. Electronic club music was pulsing out of an open doorway a few shopfronts down, and men with handlebar moustaches and lumberjack shirts were strolling up the street arm in arm. We all did a New Year's Eve countdown, with a lot of hooting and noisemakers at the stroke of midnight. Bella turned to put her arms around my neck and we kissed and kissed.

A few minutes later, a van pulled up alongside our corner. It was an airport SuperShuttle. The side door rolled open, and a guy wearing a dark beanie popped his head out and announced that we all could get a ride anywhere we liked for twenty bucks a head. All the folks on our corner looked at each other, and we all piled in. At first I thought it was a couple of SuperShuttle drivers making a little extra cash on the side, but once I got a better look at them, they seemed kind of young and not dressed at all like SuperShuttle drivers. They seemed well organized, however. One of them was writing our destinations on a clipboard and programming the GPS.

"Do you think this is a stolen SuperShuttle?" I whispered to Bella. She looked me and then at the driver, who was also wearing a beanie and looked to be about our age.

"Hm. That's a good question." I felt a little tense all the way home, but we were one of the first drop-offs and there didn't seem to be any funny business. I handed the guy forty dollars and we jumped out of the van, which sped away. For what should have been an eight-dollar cab ride, forty dollars had come to seem like an excellent bargain.

"That was insane."

As we came up the front stairs, Bella's mother was just saying goodnight to the last of her guests. She sat with us in the front room and we told her our evening's adventures, and she laughed about it as if it were the funniest thing she had ever heard. She poured us each a little glass of bubbly and we had our own New Year's toast. After a while, she headed upstairs for bed. "Don't stay up too late, kids," she said, winking at us.

"'Night, mom," Bella smiled at her. "Happy New Year," I called after her. Bella and I settled down together on the couch, but I really had to pee so I told her I'd be right back. When I came back she was leaning on the side cushion, sound asleep. I smiled ruefully at the sight, then stretched myself out on the couch and pulled her down to snooze alongside me.

_**Author's Note: Poor Edward, cockblocked by Victoria and by San Francisco's notorious lack of cabs. **_


	34. Chapter 34

**Chapter 34**, _**in which Bella tries to "distract" Edward**_

The next morning I was awoken by the sound of a throat being cleared, and groggily got one eye open to see Bella's mom standing over us. I made a little strangled sound and started up, waking up Bella, but then realized that we were lying side-by-side on the couch, fully clothed, and actually this didn't look all that bad. Renée didn't seem perturbed by it because she grinned at us and said,

"Sorry to wake you but I am starving…want to go get some brekkie?"

She wasn't even in Perth yet but she was sounding like an Australian already, with her pet name for breakfast.

So we pulled ourselves together and went out for brekkie, at a place called the Warming Hut on a pretty beach called Crissy Field, and then sat on the beach for ages, admiring the astonishing close-up view of the Golden Gate Bridge. It was a sunny, clear but cold day, and about a zillion people were out riding bikes and running along a path that ran parallel to the beach. There were also a lot of kites flying farther down past the beach on a grassy lawn area and sailboats on the bay. Afterwards, we walked around Chestnut Street and poked into a lot of shops. I encouraged Bella to buy a dress, and I bought her a new pair of sunglasses.

At the end of the afternoon, Bella's mom was off to drive up to Bolinas, an artists' colony fifty minutes north of San Francisco, to visit friends.

"Is it OK with you kids if I take the car?" she asked worriedly.

"Of course," said Bella. "We can just walk down to Union Street from here." Union Street is in the Marina, she told me, where good Greeks go when they graduate.

After she left, Bella asked me if I wanted to go grab a bite.

I gave her a crooked smile. "Don't you want to strike while the iron is hot?" I didn't want to have her mom walking in on us fooling around when she arrived home.

Bella said her mom was going to end up staying up in Bolinas overnight. "She always does. They'll be toking up all evening. She'll be texting me about 9 p.m. to say she'll be staying over."

"Doesn't she worry about leaving you alone here overnight with me?"

"Oh no, she _loves _you. All day she's been telling me how adorable you are. Plus, I've told her you're kind of old-fashioned and we're taking it slow…she just loved that."

"Well, it's not untrue, is it?" While I had previously thought things were going kind of fast, now I was starting to wonder what we were waiting for. She just smiled coyly at me.

We went out to grab a bite, and, since it was early and there was no hurry we saw a movie as well. It was a romantic comedy, typically not my favorite genre, but it was British and actually kind of funny.

As we walked back to the house, Bella got the text from her mom and so I started kissing her on the way up the front steps and did not stop while she struggled to unlock the door and while we took our jackets and shoes off in the front hall. On the way to her room I pushed her against the wall and kissed her some more, and took her shirt off. We fell down onto the bed with her unbuttoning my jeans, and we kept tonguing and fondling each other, occasionally stopping just long enough to frantically remove another article of the other's clothing. As soon as I had her stripped naked I tried that thing with my cock placed between her legs, but once again had to stop because it was too exciting.

Bella, however, apparently did _not _think it was too exciting because she took hold of me and placed me back between her legs, and began rubbing against me even more enthusiastically than before. We were lying side by side and everything was getting slippery and when she raised one thigh and the tip of my cock actually slid inside her, she pushed down to bring it a little deeper inside. I groaned and pulled out, but a moment later I rolled on top of her and tried it again, just letting the tip slide in. So deliciously warm and wet and tight around me, enveloping me. I pulled back out and lay on top of her, both of us panting.

"Bella, we can't do this. It isn't safe. I don't think I can control myself."

She hummed an "mmm" in a slightly begging tone. I pushed inside her again, pushing just a little deeper, and then pulled out.

"Do you want me to get a condom?" I whispered. "Because I have some in my bag. I'll go get one right now." Emmett hadn't been kidding about that drawer.

I added, "I don't want to push you if you're not ready, but frankly, Bella, you seem kind of ready."

"Did I ever tell you about my friend Carrie…" and Bella launched in to some story about her friend whose guy's condom broke and the big scare they had and plus you know some people are allergic to latex, can you imagine. She was talking fast…when had I heard her do this before? The Hearts game. The Strawberry Bay dig. This was her "tell"; she was trying to _distract_ me from something.

"Bella, is there something you're not telling me?" My heart kind of froze.

She looked at me blankly, and then grinned.

"Ach, I'm such a loser, I wanted it to be a surprise."

"What?"

"This week, I…well, I…"

"What?"

"I went to the doctor and got the ring."

"The ring?" Visions of gold wedding bands danced through my head.

"The birth control ring."

"Oh!"

"But you have to wait to make sure it takes effect properly."

"How long?"

"Doctor said a week. So, like, next weekend."

I was speechless for a moment, so I kissed her gently.

"We can wait…" I agreed, haltingly. "Or, if you don't want to wait, I can still go get a condom."

She shook her head. "No, we should wait."

I blew out my breath in a huff, telling myself to swallow my disappointment and fast, but before I could stop myself, I asked, petulantly, "Why?"

"I want all of you."

"What do you mean?"

"I want you to come inside me when we do it."

Hearing her say this turned me on so badly that I moaned. Just once more, I thought, and shifted to slip inside her again. So, so good. _So_ warm, _so _wet, _so _tight. I thrust in a little more. "Mmf," she complained. Oops. Maybe that was deeper than I thought. _What was I doing? _I pulled out and hovered over her.

"OK. This is killing me," I whispered.

She reached down and wrapped her hand around me, starting to move it the way I had showed her. My dick was so wet with her wetness that her hand slipped easily over the head and back down the shaft.

"Come on me," she urged.

"What?"

She giggled. "Since you can't come _in _me—_yet—_come _on _me."

"Fuck, Bella," I said, and then spurted cum all over her belly. She hummed.

"Sorry, that was a lot," I said, flopping down next to her. She traced a lazy circle on her belly with her fingertips.

I felt around on the floor for my t-shirt. "Please," I said, offering it to her.

She took it and wiped herself.

"You're always such a gentleman. I love that about you."

I laughed at this. "You have very low standards," I responded. She laughed at that.

"Were you…saving yourself for me these last couple of weeks?" she asked, referring to my comment about the quantity.

"Hell no."

"Oh?" she asked, and started sucking on my neck, one thigh flung over mine. She stopped long enough to ask, "So what did you _think_ about?"

She liked for me to talk to her about that.

"Well, I like to imagine I'm sneaking into your room late at night…"

"Wow, how do you get in there?" she asked. She was squeezing my thigh between both of hers.

"That conveniently placed trellis…or maybe the chimney has some bricks sticking out of it, I don't know."

"If only. But anyway, you're sneaking into my room…"

"Right, and I slip under your covers with you and touch you through your nightgown…"

"Is it silky?" she asked, pressing her hips against me.

"Oh yes, of course it is. I like the way your titties feel through it." I fondled them as told her this. "Then I pull up your nightgown and you're so wet, I just can't stop myself and I just take you then and there, even with Charlie sleeping right in the other room…actually, I like the thought of…fucking you…right under his nose." I wasn't totally sure if I should use the f-word like that with her, but I had noticed she seemed to like it when I swore when I was coming, so I had an inkling she wouldn't take it amiss. She didn't. She found my mouth and kissed me deeply. I slipped my fingers between her legs, feeling her wetness, and whispered,

"What's your pleasure?"

"Tongue," she answered quickly.

I scooched myself down and she spread her legs for me. I had another idea in my head, and I tongue-fucked her this time, which made _her_ cuss, and then I licked and sucked her up higher until she came, bucking her hips and crying out loudly without having to worry about anyone hearing her.

"Jesus Christ, Edward, how are you so good at that?" she panted afterward, as I wiped my chin on her thigh.

"You inspire me. In lewd ways."

I crawled up the bed and put my head next to hers on the pillows. I pulled her close, making her turn away from me, and spooned her. "Are you sleepy?" I asked, kissing her hair.

"Mm." She sounded sleepy. And content.

"OK, go to sleep, but I'm going to wake you up again before long."


	35. Chapter 35

**Chapter 35**_**, in which not much happens**_

The next morning at around six Bella's phone beeped. It was her mom:

_-B what time is E's appt at Stanfurd? I am heading back._

"Shit!" she exclaimed. "What does this mean? She's about to head back, or she is already on her way?"

She texted her back to say not to hurry, it wasn't till ten-thirty. But we figured we'd better get up and take showers. Separate showers. I had had designs on taking a shower together, but I guessed that was out.

Renée showed back up at seven-thirty. Bella was in the kitchen making coffee, and as I came down the hallway to say hello I found Bella's shirt on the floor and aimed it into her bedroom.

"Sorry for the change of plans last night. But, I'm sure you didn't mind." She winked at us. This time I felt _my_ face getting hot. Renée asked us how our evening had been, and Bella launched into an extremely detailed account of the plot of the movie we had seen, while I made scrambled eggs with tomato and green onions, and toasted some English muffins.

Bella must not have been joking about her mom's driving skills, because Renée asked Bella to do the driving down to Stanford. I had told them I would be happy to rent a car and not drag them with me, but Renée said nonsense, and that there was a yoga studio in Palo Alto they had heard was great and then they could find plenty of shops to look at on University Avenue. So we piled into the car with their sticky mats, and Renée insisted on sitting in back because "her legs were a lot shorter than mine."

They dropped me off, and I met up first with the track coach, who took me around the sports facility, and then handed me off to one of the student tour leaders for a regular school tour. I found myself really liking the peaceful, bucolic vibe of the beautiful palm tree–dotted campus and came away feeling pretty impressed by the whole experience. Maybe I _had_ been thinking too rigidly. Stanford is always ranked among the top ten American colleges by _News & World Report, _if not in the top five, after all. _I should definitely apply at least._

Bella was coming back to Forks the next day, but once my school tour had been set for Monday I had had a little trouble justifying staying an extra day, plus I figured her mom wanted a bit more alone time with her. So after we stopped for lunch, they drove me to the airport.

On the way to the airport, Muse's _Supermassive Black Hole _came on the radio.

Bella turned up the radio—"Who is this? I love this one"—and sang along:

_Oo, baby don't you yell on my cellphone  
>Oo, baby can you hear me now?<em>

"Bella, those aren't the words," I said in a stage whisper.

"No?"

"No."

A pause. "OK, what is she saying, then?"

"It's not a she, it's a he."

"Really?"

"Really. He's singing all high-pitched…like a girl."

"Huh."

She was ridiculous. What was I going to do without her for another thirty-six hours in Forks?


	36. Chapter 36

**Chapter 36, **_**in which a whole heck of a lot happens**_

Bella was back in school on Wednesday. At lunch, she told me that Charlie was going to be working the night shift the next night and that I should come spend the evening with her. At dinner on Thursday I told my parents I was going out to the movies in Port Townsend with some guys from track.

When Bella opened the door, I put both arms around her waist and kissed her.

She pulled me inside and closed the door. "Can you _try _to act discreet? I've got neighbors, you know."

I got hold of her again and, leaning my back against the door and pulling her close, began kissing her again. She made some happy little sounds, then came up for air and asked me, superciliously, what exactly I thought she had asked me over for.

"Oh, right, sorry," I said, then threw her over my shoulder and carried her upstairs amid a lot of shrieking.

"Oh my god, don't you dare drop me down these stairs."

"Stop struggling so much."

I ducked into her room, managing not to hit her head on the doorframe, shut and then locked the door for good measure, and turned the light off. She had strings of Christmas lights all around her room that gave it a mellow glow. I dropped her unceremoniously on the bed, where she lay giggling, and flopped down next to her. I noticed her Shuffle docked in her clock radio and I picked out an album. Then I rolled back over to hover over her and kissed her again, and slipped my hand under her shirt to caress her waist.

"Undress for me," I requested.

"Neanderthal." She smiled and got up on her knees. She unbuttoned her dark blue button-down blouse, letting it fall to the floor. She was wearing a little pink cotton bra underneath that was stitched to make her breasts look just a little pointy, in a retro way.

"Nice," I commented. "Is that new?"

"Yes. Nana Higgenbotham always takes me out to have tea and buy me nice underwear when she comes visit. She says it helps a girl face the world."

I laughed at this. "Tell her thank you from me."

"I think not."

She continued undressing, standing up next to the bed to step out of her cords. I was pulling off my clothes as I watched her. There was a little bow on the front of her panties. I pulled her towards me and kissed it. I helped her pull her panties down to step of them, and once I had my underpants off she sat herself down on my lap, straddling me. I pushed my hips up against her as I felt her up, then reached around to unclasp her bra and fling that out of the way. I could never get used to how pretty her breasts were, and leaned my head down to kiss them.

Soon we were scooching up on the bed so that I could lie back and she could lie on top of me, holding herself up with her arms and letting her hair fall over and tickle my chest. She was frotting against me as I sucked on her nipples, when suddenly she had one leg on either side of me and was slipping herself over my cock so I was inside her again, just like Sunday night. I groaned and pushed just a little deeper, once, twice. How good would it feel to just explode inside her. I could feel my balls tighten up, and I pulled out.

"You can keep going," she whispered.

I took a deep breath, trying to bring myself back from the brink. "Swan, are you _trying _to become a teenage mother, because we have talked about trying to improve this loser mentality of yours."

She giggled. "Cullen, you are ruining the mood. I am telling you that you can keep going. It's been one week."

_What? _"I thought you said this weekend."

"I was rounding up."

"So you're saying…you mean…"

"I want you to make me not a virgin anymore. I want you to _change _me."

My body moved of its own volition, rolling us over—no easy feat on this narrow bed of hers—and gently pushing apart her knees with my knee.

I put my head close to her ear and told her that I wanted her to be mine. She said that she _was_ mine. I said no not yet but I was going to make her mine. She raised her hips up, finding and wetting the tip of my cock. Mastering an urge to bury myself in her up to the hilt in one strong thrust, I slowly moved my own hips to stroke her with my tip, from her clit all the way down to her entrance, then slipped just the head of my cock inside her. I pushed deeper and pulled back, and again, trying to figure out where her hymen was. The tight slippery warmth of her was so fucking exciting to me that I that I wondered whether I shouldn't let myself come once and _then_ try this because I was so close already. The way things were headed, this was going to be over embarrassingly quickly, even taking into consideration that I was an extremely excited seventeen-year-old guy making it with his extremely willing girlfriend for the first time. I was also wondering if I shouldn't make her come beforehand.

So I pulled out and began to stroke her clit with the tip of my cock. She moaned and whimpered, her eyes closed and body in an attitude of complete abandonment, arms flung out to either side and legs spread wide. She gave little pushes of her hips to meet me each time I slid over her sweet spot. It was getting so slippery that she moved her hand to keep me in place and stop me from sliding too far up. I slid back inside her, just with my tip, a couple of times, but mostly concentrated on caressing her _there, _and before long she used her fingertips to hold me right there as she came, shaking, and crying out my name. This made me come at once, spurting onto her fingers and her sex. I was starting to like that business as much as she seemed to.

I slid down and put my full weight on top of her. The Elliott Smith album we were listening to had looped around again. "What song is this?" she asked me.

"'Twilight.'"

We rolled around a little, kissing and telling each other we loved each other, and I felt so excited that in short order I was hard again. I couldn't wait any more. I came back up on top of her and pushed her knees open again.

"I'm sorry if this hurts," I whispered, and pushed myself inside her, in and out, slow and steady. When she sucked in a breath, I stopped moving, but she took a deep breath and said not to stop.

"Do you want this fast or slow?" I asked her.

"Fast."

I stroked her thigh, which I could feel was tensed. "Try to relax," I whispered.

"OK."

I gave a couple of harder thrusts, which was a relief to me but made her complain softly, and then found myself completely sheathed in her. And it felt so good, I felt so close to her, such a rush of love for her, I just wanted to stay right here forever. But I also felt like I was about to explode.

"Mm, Bella," I whispered. "I can't hold off."

"Then don't," she smiled, biting her lip and pushing her hips up to bring me deeper. I thrust a little harder again, just a few times, and then my balls and stomach tightened up and I came with violent jolts of pleasure that made me cry out and actually see stars behind my screwed-up eyelids. I stayed inside her as long as I could, then pulled out and lay next to her, holding her close.

"Did that hurt?" I asked.

"Um…yes."

I kissed her cheek. "I'm sorry. It'll get better, I promise."

"Did you like it?"

"Um…it was fucking great for me." I grinned at her, and she sighed happily.

"I love you more than anything," I told her.

We lay there in a sort of a trance for a while, and then she woke me up by kissing my chest.

"When's your curfew?" she asked.

I looked at her clock. "An hour and a half ago."

"You'd better go."

"I don't want to go. I want to stay here with you all night."

I began kissing her again and touching her everywhere, until we were both breathing heavily.

"Can we try it again?" I asked. She nodded and I came back on top of her and slid myself in. She was plenty wet, not only from being excited but from my having come inside her not half an hour ago, but she was deliciously tight and I had to thrust as gently as I could several times to sheath myself inside her. This was my new favorite place in the world to be. She was making gingerly movements with her hips to meet my thrusts, and once I was inside her all the way she sighed and seemed to relax, but once I started moving again she tensed up.

"Mm, that hurts. I don't think I can."

I pulled out. "That's OK," I said, stroking and kissing her cheeks.

"Do you want me to…"

"No, it's fine. Don't worry about me." It wasn't like she owed me an orgasm, especially when she clearly wasn't getting one. I cupped her down there with my hand. "I'm sorry I hurt you."

We lay close, cuddling and whispering together, until I saw that it was nearly 1:30 and I really did have to go.

As I got up I noticed a smear of blood on the sheet.

"Oh, ah, is that…"

"Oh, I'll have to wash the sheets."

"Will Charlie notice…"

She smiled. "He has nothing to do with washing my sheets."

She added, "I don't want to wash them now that they smell like you."

# # #

I tried to be ultra quiet coming home, but as I came upstairs I bumped into Esmé in her bathrobe, squinting.

"What time is it?" she asked.

_One forty-five_. "Kind of late, sorry. Uh, we decided to stay for a midnight showing…_Blade Runner_…sorry, I lost track of time."

"OK. But this is late for a school night. And next time, call."

"OK, sorry, Ma."

I went upstairs, pulled off my clothes, and climbed into my bed naked. This sucked. It seemed _ridiculous_ that I had to leave her. I just wanted her to be with me, every night, so I could hold her and love her. I thought about marriage, again. Well, we _were _married now, in a sense, in the most primal, basic sense. I wondered if she thought about it that way too.


	37. Chapter 37

**Chapter 37, **_**in which Edward and Bella give their best impression of crazed rabbits**_

The next day at school I discovered that I could make Bella start giggling and turning pink just by looking at her, which was pretty fucking cute.

After Chemistry I leaned against the lockers next to hers while she swapped books in and out.

"When can I come over again? Or, why don't you come over this weekend. Alice can have you sleep over…"

"I can't. Charlie planned all this quality-time stuff for this weekend since I was away over Christmas."

"What about tonight?"

"I don't think I can. Some folks are coming over for dinner. Sue Clearwater…and Billy." She glanced at me.

"Billy….Black?" _Fuck. I have to tell her about that business with Jacob._

She nodded. "I don't know if Jacob's coming. I kind of think not, because I haven't heard he is." From Bella's perspective there hadn't seemed to be any ramifications from that run-in at the theater, but I hated to think what might happen if Jacob came over to her house and got in a quarrel with Bella about it.

I sighed. "I forgot to tell you…" _Riiight._ "I ran into Jacob."

"_What?"_

"Come on, let's sit outside today for lunch and I'll tell you." That would give me a few minutes to figure out what I was going to say, exactly. And also some privacy, since it was lightly drizzling and no one in his right mind was sitting outside. There were a couple of lunch tables under an awning, however, so we sat there bundled up in our raincoats and I gave her an edited version of my conversations with Jacob and then with Carlisle. I skipped the part about Carlisle's considering the possibility of our leaving Forks. No point in getting her all freaked out if that turned out to be idle horrifying speculation. Plus, Bella was already plenty riled up about the Jacob thing.

"I cannot fucking believe this. He is totally out of control. I am going to call him right now." She got up and stalked away, phone in hand.

"Bella, I don't know if that's a good idea…" She ignored me and started pacing a few yards away from me, phone to ear, and apparently got his voicemail because she just said a few words into the phone and angrily punched a button to hang up.

At the end of school I tried again to persuade her to spend the night out, and she said she couldn't, but that Jacob was not responding to her and she got the feeling he was not coming over to her house. As it turned out, he didn't show that night, nor did he call her back, though she said she left a number of messages over the weekend, voice and text.

Meanwhile, I was climbing the walls all weekend while she went fishing with Charlie on Saturday and spent Sunday in Seattle with him reliving some of their favorite activities from when she was younger—doing the underground tour of Pioneer Square and checking out the spawning salmon at the Ballard locks. She was texting me surreptitious updates all day. Now she was e-mailing me a picture of herself in front of the Ballard troll.

_-is he going to make u ride the ducks,_ I texted her in response.

_-god I hope not it is pouring down rain_

_-that's perfect cuz tmrw morn u r going to wake up w a sore throat *w*_

_-k_

_-pls delete_

The next morning instead of going to school I drove over to Bella's and parked down the street. We spent the entire day in her room, trying out different positions, just breaking for ham-and-pickle sandwiches at lunchtime. We did it with her on top, and then with me on top, and then side by side with me behind her, and then her sitting on top again because that way gave me really great visuals. She had recovered from the other night, obviously, but by the end of the day she was complaining that I was making her sore again.

Over the next couple of weeks I spent some time pondering the fact that I had this visceral, almost animal, physical reaction to Bella that I hadn't ever experienced with any other girl I'd found physically attractive. Unsurprisingly—since it had distinguished itself as a theme in the fantasies I had been entertaining all fall—I found I especially liked to take her from behind, either with her lying flat on the bed and me on top of her, or with her on all fours, a couple of times with me standing on the floor behind her on the couch, which felt particularly naughty, let me get so deep, and always made me come really hard. I didn't delve too far into the psychology behind that one. Bella continued to get especially turned on by my cum and would still sometimes urge me to come on her, which since she was good with I certainly had no objections to, but mostly she liked for me to come inside her, which seemed to give her some deep feeling of satisfaction that we also did not delve into.

Since there were always so many people at my house, the only way to hope for being alone was to go to her house after school, but between my practice and her library volunteering and the possibility some days that Charlie might arrive home around four this was not panning out very well. Bella's devious brain was working overtime, though, and she hit on a scheme whereby I could come visit her at night. She told Charlie that she wanted to paint her room, moved her essentials downstairs into the guest room, pushed all her furniture into the center of her bedroom and covered it with a drop cloth, and proceeded to start bringing home endless paint samples from the hardware store, painting swatches on the walls and then changing her mind. (She told me she was drawing inspiration from Odysseus' wife, Penelope.) This way she spent some weeks in a ground-floor room, the farthest possible point in the house from Charlie's upstairs bedroom, and where I could just climb in through a window that faced the backyard.

We both found the furtiveness of it, the fact that Charlie was usually in the house, extremely exciting, like when things seem especially funny because you're in church or class and you're not supposed to laugh and you're suppressing it. On those nights I would sneak out of my house and sneak into her bed and would tease her, work her up to the point where she could not be any more wet and was rubbing her thighs together and begging for it, and then we would fuck so hard the box springs would squeak or sometimes the bedframe would even thump the wall and she would be so far gone she wouldn't even tell me to keep it down.

We had a close call one time when Charlie woke up and heard something, and light from the stairway spilled under her door, making me spring up and duck into the closet, and then he knocked on her door. He poked his head in the room and asked Bella if she hadn't just heard something banging. She propped herself up on her elbows, squinting at the light from the hallway, and said she thought there had been a little earthquake, she thought she felt her bed shaking but was not sure if she had been dreaming. I had to cover my mouth with my hand and breath deeply to avoid busting up. Luckily I had not bothered taking Bella's t-shirt off her that time, but I'm sure she would have come up with a logical explanation for that if Charlie had noticed she was naked. After he did leave, I found that my boxers were lying on the floor in plain sight, but he had not noticed them. After that I was careful to always throw my clothes on the side of the bed closer to the window than the door.

I guess she felt bad about going behind her dad's back so much, or maybe she just liked to court danger, because she asked me to come pick her up one afternoon when he was home, reintroducing me as Edward but not reiterating the Alice's brother part _or _specifying that I was her Chemistry class lab partner _or_ her English class small group partner, and telling him we were going to the library to work on a project together. We _were_ actually going to the library to work on an English presentation about loyalty, betrayal, and the tales of Lancelot and Tristan in Malory's _Morte d'Arthur. _I gave her a ride on the back of Alice's scooter, because I figured better not to give Charlie a gratuitous gander at my car.

On the painting-the-room front, eventually Charlie put his foot down and made her pick a color because his sister was coming to visit from New Hampshire. Bella painted her room periwinkle blue and moved back upstairs, and then my nighttime visits became more erratic because it was much harder to get into her room, though we managed it occasionally using her fire ladder, which was nylon except for the metal top that fit over the windowsill and therefore did not clank too much.

With each day that passed, with each time that we made love, I wanted more. I could not get enough of Bella Swan.


	38. Chapter 38

**Chapter 38, **_**in which OK we are back to the shit hitting the fan**_

The third weekend of January and Carlisle's meeting with the Quileute tribe were fast approaching, but for this last little stretch of time he had seemed in fine spirits and hadn't said anything further about it, plus it had begun to seem far-fetched that Jacob Black could really scuttle the dig based on his friends seeing me and Bella walking around the site, so I made like an ostrich and said nothing.

The Friday night before the Saturday meeting, Alice and Bella came into the living room where I was sitting with Esmé, me fooling around on my guitar and Esmé crocheting a sweater, and draped themselves over the couch. "Is it OK if Bella sleeps over?" Alice asked, and Esmé said of course. I began playing "Please Please Me_._" Bella blushed and bit her lip to keep from laughing. I looked at her levelly and mouthed, "What?" Out of the corner of my eye I saw Esmé looking at me, and I dropped my eyes down.

"OK," said Alice, standing up. "We're going to the movies in Port Angeles."

I glanced at Esmé, who was studying her handiwork, glared at Alice, and mouthed, "What the fuck?"

Alice looked at me coolly and said loudly, "So, Edward, no date on a Friday night? A handsome boy like you? You're welcome to come with us if you don't mind watching a chick flick with your big sister and boring old Bella."

I snorted. "Nothing big about you 'cept your mouth."

I pursed my lips and added, "No, Alice, thanks for asking but I think I'll just stay here and play Ping-Pong with Jasper tonight."

"You guys have a Ping-Pong table?" Bella asked.

"Yes, in the garage. Would you like to see it?"

"We're late," said Alice, grabbing Bella's jacket and dragging her out of the room. I glanced at Esmé, who was looking at me again, then put my guitar down and went looking for Jasper.

# # #

The next day, Carlisle came home from his meeting and went straight up to his study, shutting himself in with Esmé for a half-hour before calling downstairs, where I was lying on the couch reading, or trying to:

"Edward, come up here please."

This was bad. I slowly walked upstairs and into his study, shutting the door on his request and coming to stand in front of his desk.

"Edward, I hardly know what to say."

He shook his head as if he couldn't believe it.

"I think you are fully aware what a sensitive issue this dig is for the Quileute tribe. They are extremely disappointed, and rightfully so, that a member of my own family would behave in a disrespectful way, entering this restricted area, which they consider sacred, as some kind of...teenage lark."

I remained silent. He continued.

"You showed poor judgment going down there alone, without me. And bringing Bella. I don't understand what you were doing down there. If you were curious about anything why not ask me. You know I'd be happy to show you anytime."

I wasn't sure what to say. "Well, I wanted to show Bella," I said, lamely.

"I'd be happy to show Bella. She's like one of the family. I don't understand…"

"Carlisle," Esmé said, giving him a look. "Edward, are you sweet on Bella?" she asked softly.

I couldn't help but smile at her old-fashionedness. Carlisle looked at me sharply.

"I don't know about this, Edward. I'm not sure what the exact situation is, but Mr. Black _did_ seem particularly concerned about the fact that you were taking _Bella _down there. She's a close friend of their family, of the tribe. And a close friend of our family as well. I just don't think it's a good idea for you to be…_seeing_ her. It muddies the waters."

"I can't stop _seeing _her. I'm in love with her." This sort of tumbled out of my mouth of its own accord.

He stared at me, obviously flabbergasted. "How long has this been going on?" he demanded.

I paused. "A while."

He ran his hands through his hair. "Are you intimate with this girl?"

I didn't answer.

"Edward, I asked you a question. Are you sleeping with this girl?"

Some smart-alecky response about how we were doing a lot of things together, but not much _sleeping,_ flashed through my head. Finally I simply nodded.

"Oh god," he moaned, rubbing his eyes with his palms. Esmé put one finger over her lips, as if she were shushing herself. She looked at him.

"Edward, this puts us in a very awkward position. Think about it. Her father is a small-town policeman. She's been sleeping at our house, coming on trips...as Alice's friend…and all the while our son is schtupping her?" He was starting to raise his voice. I thought about explaining that I hadn't been actually schtupping her the_ whole _while, only recently, but decided it was best to remain silent. He continued. "It's a breach of trust. What would her father think about this? Is he aware of your relationship?"

I shook my head.

"This is a small town, people are old-fashioned, and he's the _police _chief. He could probably figure out some way to have you hauled up on statutory rape charges." Carlisle stood up. "I'm sorely disappointed in the lack of judgment you have been showing in this entire matter. I need to decide what to do about this."

Esmé interrupted. "Carlisle, you can't keep them _apart._"

He waved her off. "No more sleepovers. No more trips. I have enough to worry about with this re-negotiation with the Quileute elders without having to worry about what illicit affairs are going on under this roof."

_Really? Was he _blind? I had to stop myself from rolling my eyes.

As if to underscore his point, Bella had come into my room the night before. After her especially authentic-looking show of innocent friendship, hanging out with Alice all evening, she had ostensibly gone to bed in Alice's room. When everyone was asleep, including me, she snuck down the hall and stripped naked before sliding into my bed. I woke up, instantly aroused, and quickly found myself in a game of Cad Seducing Innocent, which was one of our favorite games and went something like this:

"What _is_ that?"

(That was my cock against her thigh.)

"This? This belongs to you."

(Moving myself up higher to brush her sex with it.)

"To me?"

"Yes, doesn't that feel nice? Should I put it where it belongs?"

"Mm, where does it belong?"

(Putting the tip at her entrance.)

"Right here."

"Oh no, I shouldn't. I'm a virgin."

(She liked to play reluctant.)

"Oh that's all right. I'll just put it in a little bit."

"I'm not sure."

"Let me show you."

(Putting in the tip.)

"Oh that does feel nice."

"Do you like it? Let me put it in more."

"Just a little."

"How do you like this?"

"That feels good."

(Deeper.)

"Mm."

"Yes, that feels very good. Let me come in a little more."

"Oh, I shouldn't."

"Oh, but it feels so nice, I don't think I can stop."

"Mm, but, oh, I thought you said just the tip."

"Did I?"

"Yes, remember, I'm a virgin."

"Not any more."

(Thrusting in all the way, which made Bella groan.)

"Oh, you are so _big, _you are filling me up."

"There's another way I can fill you up, would you like to find out?"

"Oh, what do you mean?"

(I slipped my hand down to touch her _there _with my thumb and thrusted hard until I came, pouring myself into her, and she came as soon as she felt me throbbing.)

She hadn't stayed long afterward. When she went to get up I asked her where she was going and she said back to Alice's room, she was feeling a little skittish.

"By the way, you need to rein it in, Cullen. You're getting _obvious._"

"OK. Thanks for the booty call."

"Shut up," she had said, waggling her bottom at me before slipping back into her nightclothes.

_Focus, Edward. _Carlisle was saying, "And, not to mention, you could have told me about it before the meeting. Or before this blow-up. I only hear about it because these Quileute boys stumble across you two…"

"They didn't stumble across us, " I said. "They were patrolling."

"Patrolling?" he asked, sharply. "That wasn't the way it was presented in the meeting. This would have been good information to have had," he said, more to Esmé than to me.

Esmé cut in. "Edward, why don't you leave us now and we'll talk things over." She squeezed my hand and gave me a little encouraging smile. I kissed her on the cheek and left the room.

After I closed the door, I heard Carlisle ranting to Esmé about the "underdeveloped frontal lobe in the adolescent human."


	39. Chapter 39

**Chapter 39, **_**in which Bella takes action**_

I went into my room and sat on my couch in a pensive funk. After a little while, Carlisle came in to tell me I was on restriction, that for the time being I could go to school and practice but unless I had leave to do otherwise I was to stay at home the rest of the time.

Esmé came in next. She sat down next to me and asked me a couple questions about Bella, but when she saw how reluctant I was to answer, she contented herself with making sure we were being safe. She told me she liked Bella very much. I asked her about the status of the dig, and she said that nothing had been settled definitively, but Carlisle was starting to develop new academic project proposals in case they could not renegotiate the easement.

"Are we going to stay in Forks?"

"Try not to worry about that too much right now. We'll cross that bridge."

This was not a very reassuring answer.

After she left, I knew I had to call Bella and tell her. No use putting it off. She could tell something was wrong as soon as she heard my voice, but she seemed pretty calm about the whole thing until I got to the part about how Carlisle was talking about whether we would remain in Forks. It seemed so far-fetched that we would actually have to move away because of this, but on the other hand it had also seemed far-fetched that Jacob could put a stop the dig.

"But worst-case scenario I think we would be back in Seattle. Carlisle has tenure there, he would just start work on a new research project…I mean, he's not looking to leave this area, the origins of the Northwest tribes are an important focus for him…Seattle's really not that far…" I felt like I was starting to babble. "Bella? Are you there?"

"Yes," she said, squeakily, then had to stop. It sounded like she was trying not to cry.

"Let's not talk about this on the phone. Can I come over tonight? I'll sneak out. What's Charlie's schedule?"

A long pause.

"Not tonight." She seemed calmer. "I have something…I have plans. What about tomorrow?"

"Why not late tonight? After your whatever. What do you have going on?"

"No, tomorrow."

"OK, I'll figure something out."

# # #

That evening, around nine o'clock, I was sitting on the couch downstairs with Emmett, dully watching television, when my cell rang. It was Alice.

"Um…I'm here with Bella. She's hurt her hand. Can you come and pick us up?"

"Where are you? What happened?"

"We're at La Push. I think she needs to go to the emergency room."

"_What?_"

"It's OK, it's just her hand. Maybe it's sprained."

"What happened?"

"Look, I don't know. I mean, you're going to have ask her. Can you come down here? I'm worried about having her ride on the scooter, I don't know if she can hang on properly. "

I glanced at Emmett.

"Of course. Where are you exactly?"

She told me and hung up. I thought about going to Carlisle to ask permission to leave, but I knew he would likely tell me to stay put and go himself to help. I looked at Emmett again. I considered whether I could just leave on my own, but I knew our parents would hear the car on that fucking gravel driveway. Better to have an escort.

"Em, can you go tell Carlisle you're going on a Slurpee run?"

He looked pleased. "Am I going on a Slurpee run?"

"No, but I'll explain in the car."

"OK." One thing that's great about Emmett is that he is always game.

At dinner that night, my parents had told my siblings that there was this issue with the tribe and that the dig was on hold, but did not go into detail. In the car, I told Emmett the rest of the story, omitting just a few sensitive details. He offered to kick Jacob's ass. I told him I'd let him know.

As we pulled into the parking lot at La Push, we spotted the girls right away sitting on a picnic bench next to the lot. As soon as they saw us, they got up and came towards the car. Emmett got out and gave Bella the front seat, helping buckle her in, then said he'd take Alice's scooter home if she liked. She gave him the keys and we both drove off, him towards home (probably stopping at the 7-Eleven on the way) and me towards Forks hospital.

"What happened?" I asked Bella, gesturing for her to show me her right hand, which she was cradling in the other. She held it up. It looked a little swollen.

"I fell."

I looked closely at her, but her face was impassive. "What are you guys doing down here?" I asked.

Her eyes flickered to Alice. She thought for a moment, then said, confessionally, "There's a bonfire here every Saturday. I came down to talk to Jacob. He hasn't been calling me back."

My heart froze.

"What happened to your hand?" I asked her again.

"I tripped."

I frowned. It was possible, I guess, but I didn't like this one bit. "What did Jacob say to you?"

"Nothing. My hand hurts, can we not talk about this right now?"

I huffed loudly but shut my mouth.

When we got to the emergency room, Bella's father was waiting in the lobby.

"Dad," she greeted him. "How did you know…"

"Jacob called me."

Bella turned pale, but collected herself quickly. She glanced at me, then at Alice.

"Dad, you remember Alice of course. And, Edward."

His eyebrows shot up.

"Hello, Alice. Edward," he said slowly, and I got the sense that gears were turning in his head. His brow furrowed. "Were you both with Bella when this happened?"

Bella shook her head almost imperceptibly. I said, "No, sir, she…and Alice…just called me for a ride." OK? I had no fucking idea what I was supposed to say or not say, so I left it at that.

He looked at me for a long moment, then back at Bella. "OK, kiddo, let's get that hand looked at." He ushered her away, calling his thanks to us back over his shoulder for bringing her.

I attempted to grill Alice in the car on the way home, but her position was I had to talk to Bella about it; she wasn't going to get in the middle of it. She said she hadn't seen what had happened; she had walked down to the bonfire with Bella, where they found a surprised Jacob, and Alice had waited at the bonfire while they took a walk. Bella had come storming back not ten minutes later, and told Alice they were leaving, _now, _and did not tell her she was injured until they were back in the parking lot. Jacob had not followed. That was all the information I got.

When Alice and I got home, Carlisle was waiting for me downstairs, livid. He had never been this angry with me. He asked me if I thought this was a joke, and I said no, sir, and he told me to hand over my car keys.


	40. Chapter 40

**Chapter 40, **_**in which Edward gets put under house arrest**_

I handed over my car keys to Carlisle. I went upstairs and shut myself in my room, thinking to call Bella while I was still in possession of my phone, but then wondering if I was supposed to. I had no idea what Jacob might have said to Bella's father; judging by Charlie's thoughtful rather than apoplectic reaction to seeing me, I felt pretty confident he hadn't gotten the whole story of that night at the theater, but there was something about his manner that made me feel he knew _some_thing. And, for all I knew, right now Charlie was holding Bella's bag and phone while she was getting her hand examined. I'm sure I was listed in her phone contacts in some extremely bland and innocuous way, but nonetheless, I hesitated to call her, and texting was definitely out.

Finally, after a fretful hour of pacing my floor worrying about what exactly had happened to Bella and thinking of all the ways I'd like to kick Jacob Black's ass, my brain started working again and I went to Alice's room and borrowed her phone. Bella picked up on the first ring.

"Alice?"

"Edward."

"Hi," she sounded relieved.

"Where are you?"

"I just got home, it's fine," she said. "I'm in my room."

"How's your hand?"

"Um. It's OK."

"Really?"

She sighed. "It's a hairline fracture."

"It's _broken?_"

"It's fine. It really doesn't hurt that much now."

"What _happened_ tonight?"

"Well, I got sick and tired of all this evasion so I went down to the La Push bonfire to talk to Jacob. I knew he'd be there."

"And?"

A pause. "We didn't have a very good conversation."

"Did _he_ hurt your hand?"

"We just had a bad conversation, OK?"

I huffed. "I don't like you going down there by yourself like that."

"I wasn't _by myself_," she protested.

I sighed. I didn't want to scold her. "I'm glad you're all right," I told her.

"What about tomorrow?" she asked. "Can I see you?"

"Um, I don't know yet. Carlisle took my car keys away." I could always ride my bike…I really couldn't bring myself to care about getting in more trouble. But wait, I almost forgot:

"What does your dad know?"

"OK, so when you told me that Carlisle and Esmé knew, I went and told him you had asked me out."

I considered this. "Just laying the groundwork in case new shit comes to light?"

She laughed. "That's right, Dude."

"OK, that's it? What did Jacob say to him?"

She said slowly, "I don't know. I'm trying to figure that out."

"So your dad didn't say anything about it?"

"He was only asking when you and I were supposed to go out together. But…he's acting a little weird and quiet."

She paused. "I'd better go. I don't think I should let him catch me talking on the phone this late."

"OK. I love you."

"I love you more."

I smiled into the phone.


	41. Chapter 41

**Chapter 41, **_**in which Edward makes **_**another **_**trip to the emergency room**_

On Sunday morning Bella texted me to say she had to go to Port Townsend with her dad to buy housewares. Maybe this was for the best. I spent the day at home, shooting hoops with Jasper, who advised me to lie low, and shooting pool with Emmett, who advised me to lie low and then kick Jacob Black's ass when the earliest possible opportunity presented itself. Carlisle locked himself in his study and worked on his proposals all day, which gave me a tense feeling in the pit of my stomach, then in the late afternoon he drove off to the dig site to pick up some binders of data left behind at the trailer-office. Around 8 pm, the house phone rang and I picked it up. It was Carlisle. He sounded terribly frazzled.

"Hi, Edward, let me talk to your mother."

"Um…she's in the bathtub. Do you want me to get her out?"

A pause. "I'm at the emergency room. I'm OK, but I need a ride home."

"_What?_"

He sighed. "I didn't want to upset you kids. It's OK, it's just a bad bruise on my leg and a cut on my forehead."

"What _happened?_"

Another long pause. "I got jumped by some kids at the dig site. I'm OK, it's OK."

I felt positively sick. This was _so_ far beyond the pale.

"OK, Dad, I'll come right now."

"OK." I guess he was too discombobulated to object.

I ran upstairs and knocked on Esmé's bathroom door. She was done with her bath and just coming out, wearing her robe and with a book tucked under one arm and a wineglass in the other.

I told her quickly what had happened. She looked horrified. She said she would drive down there, but then looked at her wineglass and said I had better do it. She went to a box on their dresser and fished out my car keys. I took the stairs two at a time and headed out.

When I got to the emergency room, Carlisle was in the waiting area. He looked pale and shaken up, and had a bandage over one eye and blood all down the front of his shirt.

"Did you have to have stitches?" I asked.

"No, it wasn't that big a cut. It bled a lot, though," he said, indicating his shirt.

The bigger problem was he had a deep bone bruise on one thigh where he had been kicked, which made it hard for him to walk. I put my arm around him and helped him out to the car.

"How did you drive yourself here?" I asked.

"Adrenalin rush."

In the car on the way home, he told me what had happened. He had been coming out of the site with his binders and closing the gate when three figures had approached. One of them had shouted that the dig was shut down and he had no business being there, and the three of them had set on him, punching and kicking. It was dark and they were wearing hoodies and dark pants, so it had been hard to get a good look at them but one thing he did notice was one of the guys had a shiner.

"He had a black eye?" For some reason that reminded me of something on the tip of my brain.

"Yes."

"They were Quileutes?"

He paused. "Yes."

Obviously they were still patrolling. Carlisle had had permission from the tribe to come by the site and pick up his things; these guys either didn't know or didn't care that he was there legitimately.

Luckily for Carlisle, a car had pulled into the parking lot—probably a couple looking for a spot to make out, who else would come park at the beach at night—and that scared the guys off. They took off in the direction of the woods.

I said, "Dad, you need to call the cops. I'm sure we can figure out who they are. Bella knew the guys who stopped us, at least one of them."

Carlisle sighed. "I need to think about it. I don't want to alienate the tribe any further, dragging law enforcement into this."

"Dad, this is crazy."

"I'll sleep on it."

We were home by then, and I helped Carlisle into the house. Esmé had let everyone else know what was happening, and we sat him down on the couch so he could recount it again. The more I heard it the more upset I became. Carlisle had been given some Vicodin at the hospital and was starting to get sleepy, so Emmett and Jasper helped him upstairs. I went to Esmé and told her I would take Emmett to go back to the hospital and pick up my car, since I had left it there and driven Carlisle home in his.

"Oh, don't go back out for it now, you boys can pick it up in the morning."

I told her I realized I had left my iPod in the car in plain sight, so I needed to get the car tonight so it wouldn't get broken into. This was not true, but I needed to get back out and see Bella about this.

Emmett drove back to the hospital with me and dropped me off at my car. I drove to Bella's and parked down the street. It was almost 9 pm. I called her and she picked up right away.

I launched right in. "I need to talk to you. Carlisle was attacked. I am down the street from your house. Can you get outside?"

A minute later she was bringing a bag of trash out to the garbage can and she came and sat in the car with me. I told her what had happened. She asked whether Carlisle could recognize the guys, and I told her I wasn't sure but he had mentioned that one of the guys had a shiner.

She stared at me. "We have to go talk to my dad right now."


	42. Chapter 42

**Chapter 42**_**, in which Jacob gets his comeuppance**_

**A/N: And now, for the next installment of the red-headed stepchild…**

_She stared at me. "We have to go talk to my dad right now."_

Bella was opening the door of my car.

I objected. "What? No, Carlisle is not sure he wants to involve the police…"

"It doesn't have to be in an official capacity." She was getting out of the car.

I got out of the car too, and caught up with her, catching her arm. "But what are we going to say to him, exactly? What did Jacob say to him yesterday?"

"I don't know. He hasn't said. He knows about the dig being stopped by Jacob, basically. I told him this afternoon. I thought it best to go on the offensive and tell him that."

"This is too confusing. I don't know what I'm supposed to say."

"That's OK, I'll do the talking. Ring the bell in three minutes." She went back into the house. I paced around the dark street, thinking this all seemed like a terrible idea, but there was something about her manner that seemed so sure and confident that I caved and rang the bell. Bella answered the door. She conferred with me for a minute in the front hall, telling me to just tell Charlie what had happened this evening with Carlisle, before Charlie called out from the living room, "Bella, who's at the door at this hour?"

She led me into the room. "It's Edward. He has something to tell you."

Charlie stood up and looked at me dubiously.

"Sorry to bother you, Chief Swan. Um, I wanted to talk to Bella because my father was attacked this evening down at the archaeological dig site in Strawberry Bay…"

"By…" Bella prompted.

"…by three young Quileute guys wearing hoodies, one with a black eye." I looked at Bella questioningly.

"Dad, why don't you go over to the Blacks' house and see if Jacob has a black eye."

Chief Swan looked levelly at Bella. "Why do you think he does?" he asked, calmly.

"Because I think I gave him one last night," she said, raising her taped and splinted right hand.

"What?" Her father sounded shocked. "Why?"

"Because he kissed me. Against my will."

I felt like my head was going to explode. _I am fucking going to kill that guy. I am fucking going to rip his head off. _I suddenly realized I was pacing back and forth in Chief Swan's living room, rubbing my eyes with the heels of my palms. I took every ounce of will I had and tried to calm myself down and not storm out of the house and get in my car to go look for him. I took a deep breath and looked at Bella. Clever girl. This was probably why she chose to tell me this in front of her father.

"Calm down, Edward," her father drawled. He turned to Bella. "Couldn't this be some sort of misunderstanding…?"

"No. He knew perfectly well I did _not _want him to kiss me."

Chief Swan heaved a sigh. "OK. Bella, I want to talk to you for a minute. Edward, excuse us." He pointed upstairs and followed her up, presumably to her room. After a few minutes he came downstairs alone.

"So, Edward. I will pay a visit to the Blacks, and I understand from Bella that your father may be reluctant to press charges. I'll keep your name out of it."

I thanked him.

"But I'm not quite finished with you. You and Bella seem pretty…tight. What are your intentions towards my daughter, as they say?"

I cleared my throat. "I like Bella very much, sir."

"You must know her pretty well by now, after all the time she's spent with your _sister._"

I felt thrown off by this, and was not sure what to answer.

"Well…yes."

He nodded at me appraisingly. "You're a good-looking kid. You must not have too much trouble getting girls to go out with you."

I shrugged. "I like Bella. I'm not interested in other girls."

He cracked a smile. "That so? You're not a player?" He made little quotation gestures with his fingers as he said "player." I frowned and shook my head jerkily, confused.

"I had an interesting conversation about you with Jacob Black yesterday."

"Sir…I…that is…"

He waved his hand dismissively. "Don't piss your pants, Edward. In light of everything that's gone on this evening, I am disinclined to take what Jacob had to say at face value."

He continued. "Actually, I sensed something was off while I was on the phone with him. Didn't sound right. Then, when I saw you dropping Bella off at the hospital, I put two and two together and figured out Jacob's got a bad case of resentment towards you."

I looked at him. He looked at me.

"Well, I'd better go pay a call on my good friend Billy."

He extended his hand and I shook it. As I withdrew my hand he gripped it tightly.

"Do not give me any reason to be concerned for Bella's sake."

"No, sir."

He released my hand and nodded. "Well, Edward, you'd better be on your way."

I moved towards the door, looking up the stairs towards Bella's room. I glanced back at him.

He looked at his watch. "It's a bit late, Edward."

I nodded and left, closing the door quietly behind me. Once outside, I released my breath in a huff, as if I had been holding it for some time. That guy was scary. I was not going to climb through Bella's bedroom window again anytime soon, no matter how tempting it was. Forget trying to haul me up on statutory rape charges; I got the sense he might actually shoot me.

**# # #**

When I arrived home, Esmé was waiting for me downstairs. Now even _she _was mad.

"Where have you been, Edward…you're lucky Carlisle is asleep, you should have been home long ago. _Why_ are you testing us this way?"

"I went to the police," I told her.

She put one hand on her forehead. "Edward, that is for Carlisle to decide, you should not interfere this way…"

"He was _attacked. _And I know who those guys were. Or, rather, Bella knows them."

She looked worried.

"I am trying to make things right. I just went and talked to her dad, not to the police station. OK?"

The next day, Chief Swan called my father. As Carlisle told me afterwards, he said that he had heard about the attack through his daughter, who was actually acquainted with the young men involved. He said he had had confirmation from one of the boys, and did my father care to press charges. Carlisle said he'd rather not, and Charlie said he should be expecting a call from Billy Black, the boy's father.

Billy called later in the afternoon to express his shock and deep regret about his son's behavior, to say that he was grateful that Jacob would not be charged, and that Jacob would be writing him a letter of apology and would work to pay for Carlisle's emergency room bill. He said that the elders of the tribe—who were unaware of this vigilante-type activity on the part of these youngsters—were convening that evening to discuss re-confirming the archeological dig in light of this new information. Carlisle said no monetary restitution was needed, but that if the dig and his work at the clinic could continue, he would be glad to have Jacob and the other boys work as volunteers at the clinic. Billy Black thought this was a very good idea and would bring it to the elders' attention at the tribal meeting.

The next day, Carlisle got a call to say the dig was back on. The dig was on, and we were safe in Forks.

**Author's Note: Oh Jacob, you got off easy. Originally I thought you were going to get arrested. Serve you right. (PS Hate you.)**


	43. Chapter 43

**Chapter 43, _in which Edward and Bella fulfill a little fantasy of Edward's_**

**A/N: Sorry, I've been neglecting this story! I keep getting struck by how it converges with Control on certain little points, even though they were written months apart and I'm just noticing it now as I review and tweak this one. Oh well, welcome to my Id.**

After another week and a half of restriction, for good measure I guess, Carlisle finally relented. The worst of the pressure was off, but it had suddenly become hard for Bella and me to be alone together. There were no more sleepovers with Alice, and even when Bella was just over in the evening I felt Carlisle's eagle eye upon me. We did sometimes find time alone at Bella's after school, but I was always nervous her dad would come home early, and whenever I was over there and Charlie was home I was careful to confine myself to the kitchen table and living room couch; I would not even set foot in her bedroom.

This parental watchdoggery was having an effect opposite from what they were intending, of course, simply adding fuel to the fire and making us even more obsessive…plus, as we had already discovered, the sneaking around and being furtive made everything kind of hotter. I felt like I was turning into a sex fiend. Or maybe it was just natural for my age and situation. During the period they weren't letting me out of the house I picked up a book of Esmé's called _Wolf Hall,_ about Thomas Cromwell, which had this reassuring line about how "Once you've done it, you'll want to do it all the time. For about three years. That's the way it goes."

So the policing on the home front was leading us into deliciously inappropriate behavior at school. The first time was on a Saturday, after a track meet. Bella had come to watch, and afterwards we were lolling about in the bleachers outside as the track emptied out. We had not been _together _for a week, since the previous weekend when we had tried it in the cab of Bella's truck, parked a little ways down an old disused logging road not far from my house after spending the evening at the Forks pool hall with Angela and Ben. The cab of that old truck was actually pretty roomy and with her astride me it was doable, but still I felt a little uncomfortably hemmed in.

So we had not done it for a week, and also I had not even taken care of myself because Emmett swore up and down that _not _wanking or fucking led to better athletic performance, so I figured I'd test his theory with this latest meet. Now here I was sitting with Bella, feeling incredibly horny, while she was telling me how she loved that I was such a fast runner and also that I had nice calves.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, actually, nice thighs, too."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, you looked good out there today."

"Don't I always."

"You are so smug."

"You love how smug I am."

"Oh, I do."

"Well, if I performed so well, I should get a prize."

"Come over tonight and I'll give you a prize. It's been a while since you snuck into my room, incubus."

"Um," I demurred.

She looked at me quizzically. "What did you have in mind?"

"A shower."

She smiled at me. "A shower?"

I pointed with my head back towards the gymnasium.

"What, in there? A shower in there? Oh…the men's locker room?" She looked mock-scandalized.

"Yeah."

"Aren't there other people around?"

"It's Saturday so they tend to clear out pretty fast. They want to get on with their day. It's already been, like, forty-five minutes since we wrapped up."

She gave me a mischievous look, so I walked her over to the gym and poked my head into the locker room. Deserted. I took her hand and led her in. The showers were mostly open and communal, but there was one handicapped stall equipped with a locking metal door, so we went in there and undressed each other, hanging our clothes on the hooks opposite the showerhead. I lathered her up, luxuriating in the sensation of her smooth skin all slippery with soap, and she lathered me up, and then standing behind her I made her put her hands on the tile wall and spread her legs so I could take her from behind. I stopped mid-thrust, however, when I heard a voice call out,

"Anyone still in here?"

It was Coach. _Hibbity jibbity motherfucker cocksucker._ I hadn't seen his car in the lot, and I thought he had left, leaving the last one out to make sure the outside door was locked.

Bella looked back over her shoulder at me, wide-eyed, and I mouthed "fuck" and pulled out.

The shower was running, obviously, so he would know someone was here. I looked down at our feet; there was a gap at the bottom of the door and he would be able to see them if he looked.

She turned and put her arms around my neck. "Pick me up," she whispered. Brilliant.

I picked her up and she wrapped her legs around my waist. I pressed her back lightly against the cold tile wall.

I called back, "Hey, Coach."

"Who's still here?" came the response.

Bella was wriggling. "Stay still" I breathed. She smiled and shimmied down, finding the tip of my cock again and sliding herself back onto it.

Coach was still waiting for a response. "It's Edward," I called, my voice cracking. Bella was doing some clenching maneuver and my hips responded of their own accord, with a hard thrust. "Shhhhhh," I mouthed.

Calling back to him again, I said, "I've got a charleyhorse…the hot water is helping." Bella undulated her hips, massaging me in a way that made me grunt slightly.

"Are you OK, Edward?"

"Yeah, I'll be fine." _Please, please get out of here._

"OK…can you shut off the lights and pull the door fast when you leave?"

"OK, will do. See you later," I called. Bella wrapped her arms around my neck, arched her back and tilted her hips, and rode me, pleasuring herself. She bit me on the shoulder and I yelped.

"Son, are you all right?" he sounded concerned.

"Yes, yes…"

Bella started shuddering and clenching in that way I knew and loved so well. I clapped a hand over her mouth, pressing her against the tiles to prop her up. My arms were starting to get shaky from holding her up, but between her excitement and the extremity of the situation I felt so highly aroused. It was like that night in the movie theater, but more so.

"It's fine," I called, calmly.

"OK, then."

I waited a minute or two to make sure he was really gone, and then slid out of Bella and made her turn around and bend back over. God, she was wet.

"You bad girl, this isn't going to be gentle," I bit her on the neck and thrust hard, holding her hips and making her brace herself against the wall, then came hard, wrapping both arms around her and making her moan.

Afterwards, as we were getting dressed, I noticed she had another hickey. I kissed her neck.

"We should do this more often," she informed me. "That was the first time I've come without extra…help."

I swear she liked to flirt with danger.


End file.
